Jesus says:
“Whoever kills love kills peace. The more alive love is, the more alive peace is. Do you want the measure of how a being loves? Observe whether or not he has peace with himself. Whoever loves acts rightly. In acting rightly he experiences no disturbance. This is valid for all forms of love.
“Under certain aspects natural love does not differ from spiritual love. Nor can it be said that it differs in reactions. When a creature does not love or loves another creature poorly, that creature is restless, suspicious, and given to distrusting and constantly increasing offenses and, automatically, suspicions and restlessness. Furthermore, when a creature does not love or loves its God poorly, restlessness boundlessly increases and no longer permits peace. Like a fatal wind, it drags the poor soul farther and farther from the port, and the soul eventually perishes wretchedly, if a miracle of divine goodness does not intervene to save it. It is logical that it should be that way.
“God is blameless with respect to you; hence you have an absolute obligation to love Him, for He gives you love, and love asks for love. When you deny God love, you fall, as a natural consequence, into the power of the prince of Evil. You leave the Light, and the darkness enfolds you. Then the torment begins which is the preparatory phase for future afflictions. But the loving soul, sure that it is loving, is in peace. Its neighbor may accuse it of all the most wicked things; circumstances may have the appearance of heavenly punishment. But the soul will not depart from its peace. Since it knows that it loves, it fears nothing.
“Look at John. ‘One of you will betray Me,’ I said. And that sentence was like a spark cast into an industrious hive. They were all, offended by it. The guilty one even went so far as to denounce himself spontaneously by saying, ‘Is it perhaps me?’ and obtaining my affirmative reply, which only the others’ blindness allowed not to be understood. Sin possesses these acts of imprudence: it blinds to the point that it leads to self-accusation.
“But John, the faithful lover, did not move his head from my chest. His peace remained unruffled. He knew that he loved Me and the way he loved Me. Against every accusation and reproach, he had his charity and his purity as a defense. He remained with his head, unable to betray, upon the Heart unable to betray.
“I give you John as a model. I have been giving him to you for years as an intercessor. Remember. First he interceded; now he instructs you on the two qualities which make a disciple beloved: charity and purity. The more you grow in them, the more peace will grow in you. And with peace, total abandonment upon my Heart.
“The death of lovers is not a mutation - it is a perfection. You pass from the rest obstructed by matter to the free rest of the spirit in God. It is nothing but a tighter embrace in a more vibrant light.
“This is the death I reserve for those loving Me. A death of peace after a life of peace. And, in my Kingdom, eternal Peace.”