Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/0861

0861 Care of the inner life.... contemplative hours of leisure....

April 13, 1939: Book 17

Anyone who always wants to enjoy divine grace will never go empty-handed, and thus a spiritual being will communicate with you today with the fullest will of the lord. A representation will be given to you which relates to the inner life and its correct formation. It cannot remain hidden from you how little people concern themselves with spiritual questions just now. They all fear a certain knowledge and therefore avoid it. And precisely this evasion is the evil that brings the greatest harm to man. The constant attempt of spiritual forces fails one after the other; they do not succeed in making the human heart hungry and preparing it to receive divine gifts, and such avoidance is even less helpful for the soul's inner shaping.... A person without faith can also explainably not have a distinct inner life, or rather, all his thinking concentrates on purely earthly things which fill him up again sufficiently so that he never finds the time for a contemplative, inner hour of leisure. And every person should allow himself such an hour of leisure.... an hour that is spent in intimate contact with the divine saviour and used accordingly. A person should at least sacrifice one hour a day to his saviour and this hour will be blessed a thousand times over, for such a contemplative hour can result in extremely pious thinking, the realization of one's own 'self' can make the earthly child realize its worthlessness, and this can stimulate the willing person to cooperate in God's kingdom and have an extremely beneficial effect. And this is what an hour of reflection on spiritual problems brings about, and even the non-pious human being sometimes sends questions into the universe which at first only arouse his purely scientific interest but which, in time, inwardly change the very person and also bring him closer to the question of his outcome, which can now be of inestimable value for a believing mind, in that the spirit which still slumbers unawakened in the human being now begins to stir and only awaits the earth child's willing devotion in order to become active. Everything that happens outside of the human being sometimes keeps the soul from its beneficial task, therefore the human being should immerse himself in regular contemplation, he should leave everything earthly aside during this time and only think about such questions which concern eternal life.... he should deeply think of the creator in his heart and regard himself as His created being and demand clarification about his actual purpose. And once this has become his, he should investigate himself, remove all impure thinking from his heart and make it homely for the highest and best being.... he should strive for perfection.... he should connect all earthly activity with profound questions.... concerning the soul's salvation he should look at himself like a creature alien to him so that he will completely recognize his faults and weaknesses and relentlessly strive to conquer them.... he should continue to leave no stone unturned which could contribute to awaken the same striving and desire in the fellow man.... he should seek spiritual exchange as often as possible and thus continue to care for the shaping of his soul, so that the heart will be presented to the lord as a receptacle of divine truth in such a way that He will henceforth integrate it into His obedience, that He henceforth takes it into His care and protects it from every danger from outside.... For as the human being cultivates his inner life, blessings will one day accrue to him, his spiritual alertness will bring him success, and he will no longer pay attention to the world, so that he will be granted insight into spiritual spheres, because he first paid attention to his inner life....

Amen

Translated by Doris Boekers