Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/4953

4953 Grace....

August 20, 1950: Book 56

Whoever has experienced God's grace in himself should also take care that others come into his possession, and this is already a sign that it has become effective in him. Therefore, a person should help his fellow human beings, just as he was helped in spiritual as well as earthly adversity. Help in earthly adversity is a work of unselfish neighbourly love and at the same time a sure means of securing a treasure of grace, and man then uses this again to help in spiritual adversity. God gives His grace to the humble. The humble person serves his fellow human being, and thus serving neighbourly love is always the path that leads to God's inexhaustible source of grace. God's grace is the expression of His love and mercy, it is a gift which is intended to lift the weak fallen person up to Him; furthermore, it is a means to resist temptations of all kinds, it is the source of strength which emerges from divine mercy and is available to the human being undeservedly, from which he can take and use according to his own will. The human being who is willing to love receives grace in abundance, which he acquires through his activity of love. But it also flows to the loveless person, only it usually remains ineffective because he does not pay attention to it. Thus the human being can accept or reject a gift that is offered to him, but he can also acquire a treasure, i.e. increase what he receives as a gift a thousandfold through his own will, i.e. through serving neighbourly love. Grace is everything that God bestows on man so that he may become blessed. All means of beatification are means of grace, because it is an act of grace of immeasurable importance, if God helps the fallen away from Him to reach a height again, which he could never reach by his own strength. God's infinite love and mercy helps the fallen one to strength, but does not force it upon him, but makes it dependent on his will to accept or reject it. Everything is therefore grace which promotes the spiritual's ascent development, except that grace cannot be rejected in the preliminary stages, whereas the spiritual, which is embodied as a human being, is free to make use of it or to disregard it. And it follows that every person can become blissfully happy if he wants to.... because everyone can also make use of grace if he wants to, and no-one will go empty-handed as long as he stays on earth as a human being. Yet no constraint is imposed on his will, otherwise God's grace would work in every person but this would not be a free ascent and thus spiritual perfection would be impossible, which, however, is the final aim of everything that became imperfect in free will and is therefore also unhappy as long as it does not use God's grace....

Amen

Translated by Doris Boekers