Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/2402

2402 Consciously requesting grace through prayer.... not-wanting-to-believe....

July 9, 1942: Book 32

The conscious utilization of divine grace brings the highest spiritual success. As soon as the human being requests God's grace in prayer his soul professes its faith in God, and divine strength will constantly flow to a God-focussed being, since without this strength the soul cannot ascend. But God wants to draw the beingness up to Himself and will therefore always be willing to help this beingness to reach its goal. The human being may only want to receive in order to then also receive what is necessary for his higher development. But prayer proves the human being's will towards God, and thus he can be offered every means of help.... divine grace.... and the ascent to the heights is made easy. But people do not very often avail themselves of the grace they are entitled to.... They do not connect with God in prayer in order to ask for His strength for their way of life and therefore cannot mature spiritually either, because the gift of grace cannot take place if it is not consciously desired. God's love and grace is indeed constantly and indiscriminately at work in people insofar as they repeatedly find themselves in situations where they could seek contact with God in prayer, yet this presupposes faith in a power Which is willing and able to help, and humanity lacks this faith and thus does not desire the influx of strength from an entity Which it does not recognize. But it is easy to believe in this entity if a person thinks about it seriously. Thinking, however, is left to his will and therefore lack of faith is inexcusable.... One can never speak of not being able to believe, (but) rather faithlessness is a not wanting to believe, which therefore also makes the influx of divine grace impossible because it is not consciously requested in prayer. And that is why a person who cannot pray is a miserable, pitiful creature who can only be helped through loving intercession so that his mind will change and he will come to realization.... A fellow human being can be granted grace through a person's intercession, yet he is free to make use of it, for a being which would like to receive divine grace against its will would also be pushed into a higher degree of maturity against its will, which would not suit it because the being senses its lack of freedom, thus it feels that its state has been changed beyond its will and that this does not signify happiness for the being. The favours which are at man's disposal are inexhaustible, but man's will must consciously request them. The granting of grace without prayer is impossible, even though the whole of earthly life is to be regarded as a great favour, for it was granted to the being through God's greater than great love so that it can come close to Him. Yet even this grace can remain unsuccessful if the human being is not aware of the fact that earthly life, the embodiment as a human being, is a grace.... if he only values earthly life purely earthly and therefore only utilizes it earthly and disregards all spiritual higher development....

amen

Translated by Doris Boekers