Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/7223

7223 Love and suffering - way up....

December 7, 1958: Book 76

I want to show you the shortest practicable way to shorten your time of development in order to lead it to a successful end for you.... During your earthly life you are given the opportunity to do so, but you must also know all the advantages and disadvantages of your way of life so that you don't take this last path across earth in vain, so that you don't live aimlessly and without a plan and the days are lost to you when you can shape your own destiny for eternity. There is a very short path that leads safely to the aim: the path of love and suffering, which Jesus Christ also took, in Whom I Myself walked the path over the earth. Love and suffering certainly bring about the soul's perfection, and that is why My gospel is only ever the divine teaching of love which I preached on earth and which I will preach again and again to people who listen to Me, who want to hear My word. Your earthly task consists of the transformation of your nature into love alone; and where this transformation is not striven for intensively enough, suffering has to help so that the soul will be purified while still on earth, so that it will pass over into the kingdom of the beyond as unencumbered as possible when its earthly career is completed. Love and suffering.... of the human being Jesus' life on earth was an uninterrupted activity of love.... which was finally replaced by an abundance of bitter suffering and pain which His body and soul took upon themselves out of love for tormented fellow human beings, whose soul's suffering the human being Jesus knew about as a result of the high degree of love He had achieved. And only this high degree of love made it possible that I Myself could embody Myself in this man Jesus, that I, as the eternal love, could fill Him completely and thus carry out in Him the act of salvation for humanity for the purpose of which I lived on earth. Love and suffering were intended to bring salvation to people in their great spiritual adversity, which consisted of the fact that they were bound by My adversary and had no strength to defeat him. Jesus exemplified love to people and proved to them in Himself that love is 'strength', that He was able to accomplish everything with this strength of love and that He was therefore also able to defeat the adversary by virtue of His love.... But love also motivated Him to take upon Himself the guilt of the people who had caused this bondage by the adversary in the first place, that is, to pay the adversary the purchase price for the release of the souls which wanted to be free from Him. And He paid this debt with immeasurable suffering and the most bitter death on the cross. He offered Himself as a sacrifice, He gave His body for the life of the fallen and therefore bound souls and bought them, so to speak, free from their lord, to whom they had become slaves through their own guilt. As the human being Jesus Himself I paid the guilt for all My living creations and also showed all of them the path they had to take in order to leave My adversary's realm and enter My realm.... They had to live a life of love, because without love the adversary retains control over the human being, because love is the first bond with Me and without Me it is impossible to detach oneself from the adversary. Therefore the human being must follow My commandments of love.... and, if he has to bear suffering and adversity.... patiently accept it always in remembrance of Jesus Christ, the divine redeemer.... Then he takes the path I show him, then he has already mentally united himself with Me, and through loving activity he now strengthens his union with Me, he takes the path of following Jesus Christ, he changes his nature into love and purifies his soul through suffering, and thus he must now also irrevocably reach the aim, the union with Me, for "he who abides in love abides in Me and I in him...." Love alone unites us closely, love alone is the path to Me, which is only shortened by suffering and thus can now certainly already reach perfection in earthly life, which is the purpose and aim of man's earthly progress....

Amen

Translated by Doris Boekers