Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/2410

2410 Neighbourly love corresponds to the original state of being....

July 15, 1942: Book 32

Active neighbourly love is no longer practiced by people because everyone only strives for their own well-being, i.e. selfish love is too strongly developed. This attitude of people is contrary to the original nature and the original purpose, for the being emerged from love and its activity should be an act of love.... it emerged from the all-encompassing love of God and should radiate love again.... Human love, however, is small and narrowly limited, it only extends to one's own body, it is therefore not blissful but only demanding.... It is not giving, but always demanding, and it will never be equal to divine love. Active neighbourly love corresponds more to the original state and the original determination of the being, and therefore only through it can the being free itself from self-love and come closer to the original state again. It is selfless and only wants to please, and consequently it must be of divine origin, that is, it must flow from a heart that feels connected to God and can therefore receive God's emanation of love. Divine love constantly distributes, just as active neighbourly love is a constant distribution of what the person himself possesses or receives. Self-love, on the other hand, does not give but takes everything for itself, it does not make happy and is in no way divine, but rather proves that it belongs to the one who rejects divine love and has fallen prey to unkindness. In His immense love God created human beings in order to restore the beingness to its original state, in order to give it back what it had once lost because His love constantly wants to give and the hapless state does not correspond to His feeling of love. However, the beingness can only receive His emanation of love again and therefore only be in a happy state when it has shaped itself into love, when it distributes love itself in complete unselfishness. Only then will its feelings, thoughts and actions correspond to its original state, which was a state of deepest and purest love and the being was therefore similar to God and could be close to Him. But this state should also make the being happy again, for it is the final goal of all beingness that emerged from God, and it can only be achieved if the human being practices love, if he unselfishly distributes to his fellow human being what he himself possesses and what he himself deems desirable. For giving love is divine, and thus it must also mould the giver into a divine being, it must stimulate the heart to ever more eager loving activity and reduce the distance from God ever more.... The loving person must find union with God through his activity of love and be seized by divine love, which radiates through him more and more until the being has completely become love, until it is again what it originally was.... a spiritual being that has emerged from divine love, that is in the closest union with God, that can work and create like Him....

amen

Translated by Doris Boekers