Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/4618

4618 Sins of the fathers take revenge on the children....

April 19, 1949: Book 53

Throughout generations the sin of the fathers will affect the children.... This is how you have been taught and you have often come into conflict with the teaching of a God of love and mercy Who forgives the sinner and remits his punishment if he sincerely repents. You cannot understand that people have to suffer who are not guilty of anything themselves and are therefore the victims of those who sinned against God. And yet, God's wisdom and love is at work here too, even if in a way you cannot quite understand, the essence of the soul before its embodiment as a human being speaks here, which chose a sinful human being itself for its implantation into the flesh. These souls are particularly impulsive, they are still in an extremely deficient state despite their endlessly long course of development, despite multiple and agonizing deformation, they have not yet given up their impulsiveness and are now instinctively striving towards a related human soul where they hope to have the opportunity to live out their impulsiveness. They are not infrequently filled with the same desire which caused the human being to become sinful, just as they often stimulate it as soon as they have taken up residence in a body (mother's womb) and then sin naturally has the strongest influence on a newborn child, which is why one now speaks of predisposition and inheritance of bad dispositions. No soul comes into such a body which has already reached a certain degree of maturity because its course of development should not be endangered, as well as it has already previously expressed its will to strive towards God. But such a burdened soul can very well free itself from its predispositions on earth, it can recognize its own faults and impulses through an apparently blameless earthly fate and try to free itself from them, and then it will also be able to receive grace in every way, that is, help from above, in order to carry out its will. But for the most part such souls live out and increase the sin of the fathers, yet always in a certain freedom of will, for coercion is not imposed on them. But they believe themselves to be under compulsion and thus seek to reject all responsibility, they don't wage the slightest battle with themselves and therefore succumb to every temptation which they could, however, resist but just don't want to. But the will is inclined towards evil from the start of embodiment, and this will has chosen the form for itself which should become the bearer of the soul, which, however, never excludes that the soul can now let the will become active as a human being and free itself from sin.... that a link of the chain will then be broken and the fathers' guilt of sin can also be redeemed for the sake of such a child. For the will of an impulsive person is strong in itself, only wrongly directed. But if it is directed in the right direction, then it can also triumph over everything and thus become a saviour of his ancestor and reduce his suffering and hardship in the hereafter.

Amen

Translated by Doris Boekers