Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/4403

4403 Measure of charity: self-love....

August 12, 1948: Book 51

What you want to receive, what you wish to be given to you, you must also give to your neighbour if he asks you for it.... This is love for your neighbour, which is measured according to your love for yourselves. If you give from abundance and don't feel the need to make your fellow human being happy, this is also not neighbourly love according to My will. The feeling of love must always drive your actions and therefore I have given you the standard of self-love as a comparison, for the degree of neighbourly love is also determined by how you give. Just as you wish to be given, you should also give out if you want to find favour in My sight. And if you are thus meagre with evidence of love, if you only ever want to receive it yourselves and never satisfy your fellow human being's desire, you will not fulfil My commandment which demands love and then you cannot receive what comes forth from Me as evidence of My love either.... you can never receive My word directly, and if it is offered to you by worthy representatives of My teaching you will accept it without understanding; you will certainly listen to it but it will not penetrate your heart because the spirit in you is not awakened as a result of unselfish activity of love. And thus I tell you again and again, observe yourselves, practice love and sharp criticism of yourselves, in what degree of love you are towards your neighbour, and then put aside your self-love and sacrifice.... give what is dear to you and what you don't want to part with. And if your heart tears itself away from what you would like to keep and love drives you to renounce it, then you will already have progressed far in your development, for then the spirit within you will be active which will introduce you to all wisdom. And you will receive spiritual as well as earthly goods just as you distribute them; but anyone who is frugal and leaves his fellow human beings destitute, although he has the opportunity to make them happy through actions of love, will also go empty-handed himself, for he does not fulfil My commandment, on which I also make the measure of My gifts of grace dependent, for My word says: "As you measure out, so shall it be measured out to you...."

Amen

Translated by Doris Boekers