Gifts of Heaven · Volume 2 · Chapter 313

Blessing of the visitation

13th October 1843.

[1] Just write, write, because I already know what it is about!

[2] My dear Ans. H.-W., behold, even the hour in which you were born in the flesh is well known to Me. I have blessed you then and bless you again now, so that you always are to remain healthy in spirit as well as incidentally in the body, as much as is necessary for your salvation. But do not attach too much importance to the health of the body, because it harms the spirit more than it benefits it.

[3] Look at a fresh green nut on the tree! As long as it remains firm, fresh and green, the kernel will not become ripe. But when the outer green peel begins to tan and become afloat and dries out around the nut, it is a sign that the nut has ripened inside the peel.

[4] For this reason I also always let the ones who are Mine be bodily a little ailing now and then, so that they should not mix themselves too much with the world in a too healthy body condition. For if somebody is completely lion-like healthy in body, not the slightest thought comes to him that he will once have to leave this world of deceit after all; and he has the most ardent desire to live only eternally on earth, and never gets the holy homesickness for the eternal Father-home in the Heavenly Kingdom.

[5] But if his body becomes sick, then man remembers that there will be no staying on earth, and now and then he already begins to think a little anxiously, what there might be and come after the death of the body. And that is already more salutary to the spirit than all the innocent pleasures with a fresh and healthy body.

[6] Behold, if you want to send a son abroad, and he is doing excellently there, do you think that he will return to you? Do you think he will get homesick for his fatherly home? Oh no, you can be sure of that! For he will say: ‘There I would have to be a true fool! Here I have everything my heart desires, and on top of that I am honored everywhere I go. But when I come home, I must again come to the father, asking for every little thing, and only then does he reflect, long enough, whether he should give me the requested thing or not. Here I am a respected gentleman for myself, but there at home, at my father's side, the nobody; therefore I remain here!

[7] Behold, this is the literal utterance of that son in a foreign land, who is too well off on foreign soil! If the father will also summon him home, he will nevertheless go home, but with great unwillingness, and secondly, he will behave at home in such a way that it will be a bare disgrace. For everything will seem too narrow and miserable and bad to him, in a word, he will never do good at home! But if a son is not doing great in a foreign country, but rather quite miserable or often even wretched, he will soon act like the lost son!

[8] Hence, therefore, I also tell you this today, so that you, when I haunt you with slight bodily ailments, should remember and know that such bodily ailments are nothing but little hand tickets, by which I remind My children of their Fatherly house and of their homecoming, so that they should not settle too firmly in the foreign world! But I therefore surely do not want to call you away so soon from the foreign country, but only to remind you of your homeland! That you should measure all inconveniences of your earthly life accordingly. That is what I, your holy Father, wish you today as always in all fullness of My love and grace – therefore heed it also most livingly. Amen.