The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis, Post 1

Back in May, the Catholic Thought Book Club read The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis This and subsequent posts are my end of the conversation and constitute my thoughts.  The book is divided into four parts each called a “Book.”  I did not make any comments on the last book. 

This is my second reading of this famous work.  Back in April of 2014 I posted on my first read.

As a short introduction, The Imitation of Christ is a devotional book composed in the early 15^th century by a group of German/Dutch Augustinian monks, of which Thomas à Kempis is one.  The book is usually attributed to à Kempis, but more than one monk had a hand in the writing.  It was written prior to the Protestant Reformation and the book is the most widely read Christian devotional other than the Bible.

I'm using the Dover Thrift Edition which I must have bought a number of years ago for a dollar or two. The translators are Croft and Bolton.  You can find this edition online, here 

From Book 1, "Thoughts Helpful in the Life of the Soul":

Comment 1:

Good comments Nikita. You conveyed well. I echo your concerns. I'm going to wait a little longer before I give some less favorable comments. I don't think you're going to be alone in the criticism.

But I agree, there are wonderful nuggets everywhere in the book.

One of the fundamental questions in reading the book, and you touched on it, is who is the author writing for? We in the general population read it today, and the general population derives all sorts of spiritual wisdom from it. But it does strike me the author's intent was toward a very specific readership. For instance, take the second sentence in Book 1, Chapter 8:

"Do not keep company with young people and strangers."

What an odd recommendation. How can one actually observe that, or is it even wise to do it? Obviously this could not be recommended for the general secular population. It certainly could not be intended for priests either. It certainly can't be intended for people who are to evangelize. I share your Dominican ethos. I think this is a problematic book for we who want to engage the world.

Comment 2:

Yes, Augustinian monks, which I don't know that much about. I'm trying to research it as I take breaks from work...lol. Interestingly, Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk.

Comment 3:

Chapter 16, “Bearing the Faults of Others” is absolutely perfect and one that hits home for me. It’s just four paragraphs long. First, he a person bearing faults may be there to test your patience. Correct them and then pray for them. Second, if that person does not amend, one has to bear it patiently. God will eventually turn that problem (a Kempis calls it an evil, but I think that might be too harsh) into a good. Then he advises to bear patiently the faults of others because you have faults too that others must endure. It reminds me of the passage in Matthew where Christ says “"Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” (Matt 7:3).

Then in the third paragraph he comes to the heart of the problem.

“If you cannot make yourself what you would wish to be, how can you bend others to your will? We want them to be perfect, yet we do not correct our own faults. We wish them to be severely corrected, yet we will not correct ourselves.”

The question is of will, conforming your will to God’s and the impossibility of trying to conform another person’s will.

Then in the final paragraph a Kempis draws a more philosophical conclusion:

“If all were perfect, what should we have to suffer from others for God's sake? But God has so ordained, that we may learn to bear with one another's burdens, for there is no man without fault, no man without burden, no man sufficient to himself nor wise enough. Hence we must support one another, console one another, mutually help, counsel, and advise, for the measure of every man's virtue is best revealed in time of adversity -- adversity that does not weaken a man but rather shows what he is.”

We are here on earth to interact and love one another. These irritations are actually here for a divine purpose.

Comment 4:

The Eighteenth Chapter, “The Example Set Us By The Holy Fathers” is so beautifully written I want to quote the first three paragraphs, which almost the entire chapter.

Consider the lively examples set us by the saints, who possessed the light of true perfection and religion, and you will see how little, how nearly nothing, we do. What, alas, is our life, compared with theirs? The saints and friends of Christ served the Lord in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness, in work and fatigue, in vigils and fasts, in prayers and holy meditations, in persecutions and many afflictions. How many and severe were the trials they suffered -- the Apostles, martyrs, confessors, virgins, and all the rest who willed to follow in the footsteps of Christ! They hated their lives on earth that they might have life in eternity.

How strict and detached were the lives the holy hermits led in the desert! What long and grave temptations they suffered! How often were they beset by the enemy! What frequent and ardent prayers they offered to God! What rigorous fasts they observed! How great their zeal and their love for spiritual perfection! How brave the fight they waged to master their evil habits! What pure and straightforward purpose they showed toward God! By day they labored and by night they spent themselves in long prayers. Even at work they did not cease from mental prayer. They used all their time profitably; every hour seemed too short for serving God, and in the great sweetness of contemplation, they forgot even their bodily needs.

They renounced all riches, dignities, honors, friends, and associates. They desired nothing of the world. They scarcely allowed themselves the necessities of life, and the service of the body, even when necessary, was irksome to them. They were poor in earthly things but rich in grace and virtue. Outwardly destitute, inwardly they were full of grace and divine consolation. Strangers to the world, they were close and intimate friends of God. To themselves they seemed as nothing, and they were despised by the world, but in the eyes of God they were precious and beloved. They lived in true humility and simple obedience; they walked in charity and patience, making progress daily on the pathway of spiritual life and obtaining great favor with God.

One of the strengths of the Kempis’ work is the beautiful prose.  Look at how rhythmic is that first paragraph.  “The saints and friends of Christ served the Lord in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness, in work and fatigue, in vigils and fasts, in prayers and holy meditations, in persecutions and many afflictions.”  Listing always makes for wonderful prose, but listing in doublets creates a wonderful see saw rhythm: saints and friends, hunger and thirst, cold and nakedness, and so on.  And he continues it on in the following paragraphs: strict and detached, long and grave, pure and straightforward, precious and beloved, humility and simple, charity and patience.  It really creates a unified prose.

As to the content of theme of this chapter, it provides a connection to earliest followers of Christ and those that followed his example best.  We call them saints but really they are imitators of Christ.  But à Kempis selects the most ascetic elements of saintliness to idealize.  The value he highlights is “renouncing” things of the body or perhaps better stated, things that do not gratify the body.  He even mentions the desert fathers by name as the models to emulate, those that may have been the most ascetic of saints.

But I do think one sentence is telling of à Kempis’s inclinations, and I have to say while the advice throughout is sound, this one sentence takes thigs too far.  It’s the last sentence of that first paragraph: “They hated their lives on earth that they might have life in eternity.” 

Is that really what we’re supposed to do, hate our lives on earth?  I just got finished reading Dante and he glorifies the body.  Certainly not glorifying it at the expense of sin, but in concert with goodness.  Dante makes the point in heaven we will eventually be rejoined with our bodies, and that is the ultimate glorification.  Our bodies are good things in themselves.  Yes, we are supposed to tame our urges, but be repulsed by our physical nature.  I don’t think we’re supposed to “hate” our lives on earth.  If this asceticism is adhered to in despising our lives, then we are acting in opposition to the Creator who created us in love. 

Finally I’m reminded of a wonderful quote by St. Catherine of Siena, who was known to perform such extreme mortifications herself.  Her quote is, “Every step on the way to heaven is heaven.”  For Catherine, there is joy in her asceticism.  I never sense that joy in à Kempis.

Comment 5:

I think to answer some of the questions brought up, we should look at the historical context the work was written.  The actual dates The Imitation of Christ was composed are from 1418-1427.  This is the late middle ages and already a number of social pressures are causing the nature of society to change.  While the plague that came to be called The Black Death had peaked about fifty years before in Europe, taking over a third to half of the population, it still resurged every so often.  More importantly it had left its cultural stamp in the European consciousness.  Some of the cultural changes were a more cynical outlook, a loss of faith, and those that maintained faith emphasized the importance of the spiritual over the physical.  Ideally in Christianity (and in Judaism, I suppose as well) there is a balance between the spiritual and the physical.  Remember we are to regain our bodies at the end of time, so there is nothing per se wrong with our physical beings.  But in the second century there grew the gnostic heresy which uncompromisingly maintained that the physical was evil and the spiritual was good.  While the gnostic heresy was eventually stamped out, this type of heresy returns to varying degrees, rebounding and retreating, many times in western culture.  Because of the horrid physical nature of the Black Plague’s disease, European culture at the end of the Middle Ages were in a period of rejection of the physical.  The Protestant Reformation, which would come in a few generations, I think picked up on this and carried it into the modern world. 

The other great historical event that had been going on the previous fifty years was the Great Schism in the Catholic Church.  From 1378 to 1417 the Church was in a severe crises where at first two men claimed the legal right to be Pope, and Europe divided herself over loyalty to one of these “Popes.”  And still at another point in that span of time a third man claimed as having the legitimate claim to the papacy.  Yes it reached a point of three factions were fighting over the head of the church.  You’ll have to read the disgraceful details because it gets complicated, but the effect on the general population was a loss faith in the church and further cynicism for institutions as a whole.  It really set the stage for the Protestant Reformation.  Add famine, wars, and political in-fighting, and you can see the times not conducive to harmony.  It’s in this context that Machiavelli writes his political works. 

The writers of The Imitation of Christ also had a reaction to the times around them, but instead of the Machiavellian reaction, à Kempis and company had a different sort of reaction.  Many of you may have heard of Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option as a strategy for Christians to retreat from the toxic culture of the 21^st century.  The Imitation of Christ is the 15^th century version of the Benedictine Option.  It’s a retreat from the chaos of the late middle ages.  Our views of the Middle ages are skewed by the struggles to eke out a life in the period from the collapse of Rome to about 1000 and this chaos of the late middle ages I’ve described above.  But the High Middle Ages (1000 to 1300) were actually a period where European civilization flourished and prospered.  à Kempis and company were looking back to a better time, a time where monasteries provided stability.  

But monasteries had been declining by the end of the Middle Ages.  The Franciscans and Dominicans had been pulling the religious out into the culture, not separating itself away.  The writers of The Imitation of Christ may have looked at this as part of the problem.  And so, given the chaos and the cynicism of the times, they called for a monastic resurgence to withdraw from the culture.  But along with it, they brought with them the semi-gnostic emphasis of the spiritual over the physical.  They now saw the physical as part of the problem of its contemporary times.  Christ is just as much physical in the Gospels as spiritual.  Everyone reads the Gospels with their own biases.  I think à Kempis and company brought their spiritual biases as to what aspect of Christ’s life we are to imitate.

Now this is all my perception, and I’m no historical scholar, so take it with a grain of salt.  But if you think I’m off in any of this, speak up.  I’m open for discussion.  But surely the historical context of which these writers were generating these thoughts had to have some bearing on their world view.