Jesus says:
"I want to speak to you about human prudence.
Supernatural prudence is a great virtue. But human prudence is not a virtue. You men have applied this name, as a false label, to improper and non-virtuous sentiments. Just as you call charity the coin you give to the poor.
But if you give an alms, even a showy one, and give it to be seen and applauded by the world, do you think that you are doing an act of charity? No. Be deceived. Charity means: love. Charity is, therefore, to have pity and love for all the needy of the earth. You do not need money to make an act of charity. A word of advice, a word of comfort, a word of kindness, an act of material help, a prayer, are charity. An alms given with rudeness, humiliating the poor, in whom you do not know how to see me, is not charity.
The same is true of prudence. You call prudence your vileness, your desire to live in peace, your selfishness. Three things that are certainly not virtue.
In your relations with religion, too, you are lovers of quiet living. When you know that a frank profession of faith, that an expression, said as the Spirit of Truth whispers it to you, can take away from you authority, givers of work, husbands, children, parents, from whom you expect material help, your human prudence makes you shut yourselves up in a silence that is not prudent but cowardly, if not guilty, because you come to deny, to deny, perjuring, your more spiritual feelings.
Peter was the first who in the hour of danger, out of human prudence, went so far as to deny that he knew me. I allowed it, this, so that repentant, I could later compassionate and forgive the fainthearted brothers. But how many "Pedros" since then until now! You always have a petty interest in mind, and you put it before and protect it to the detriment of the eternal interest that the courageously and valiantly professed Truth fructifies you.
Before certain manifestations of God, you, poor men, certainly do not have the courage of Nicodemus and Joseph, who in a tremendous hour for the Nazarene and for his followers knew how to go ahead to think of Me against the hostility of all Jerusalem. You yourself, at times, remain a little perplexed before certain expressions of mine and you would like to make them less blunt.
Human prudence guides you. You carry it everywhere. How you have changed in relation to the first Christians who did not take into account anything that was human and looked only to Heaven!
It is true that I have told you to be prudent like serpents, but not with human prudence. I have also told you that to follow Me you must be bold against all. Against the love of self; against the power, when it persecutes you because you are my followers; against father, mother, wife, children, when they want, out of human affection and earthly concern, to prevent you from following my Way, because only one thing is necessary: to save one's own soul even losing the life of the flesh to obtain eternal Life".
MARIA VALTORTA NOTEBOOKS OF 1943, June 17th