AC 3994 - Innocence Is the Essential of Love and Charity

 AC 3994

In all good there must be innocence
in order that it may be good.
Charity without innocence is not charity;
and still less
is love to the Lord possible without innocence.
For this reason innocence is the very essential
of love and charity, consequently of good.
A proprium (own, ego) that is innocent
is to know, acknowledge, and believe,
not with the mouth but with the heart,
that nothing but evil is from one's self,
and that all good is from the Lord;
and therefore
that what is a person's proprium (own, ego)
is nothing but blackness;
that is to say, not only the proprium of his will,
which is evil,
but also the proprium of his understanding,
which is falsity.
When a person is
in this confession and belief from the heart,
the Lord flows in with good and truth,
and insinuates into him a heavenly proprium,
which is white and lustrous.
No one can ever be in true humility
unless he is in
this acknowledgment and belief from the heart;
for he is then in annihilation of self,
indeed, in the loathing of self,
and thus in absence from self;
and in this manner he is then in a state
capable of receiving the Divine of the Lord.
It is by this means
that the Lord flows in with good
into a humble and contrite heart.