This is my final post on The Imitation of Christ. At the end is my book review I posted on Goodreads. I gave the book three stars.
You
can find Post 1 on this read, here,
You
can find Post 2 here.
You
can find Post 3 here.
Still
on Book 3, “Internal Consolation”:
Comment
8:
So
I’ve been critical, as you’ve seen my comments, calling à Kempis
“semi-gnostic.” If he values the spirit over the corporeal so much, why isn’t
he fully gnostic? Let’s look carefully at why he considers the spiritual so
much more important. In Book Three, chapter 35, he says through the Voice of
Christ:
If
you look for rest in this life, how will you attain to everlasting rest?
Dispose yourself, then, not for much rest but for great patience. Seek true
peace, not on earth but in heaven; not in men or in other creatures but in God
alone. For love of God you should undergo all things cheerfully, all labors and
sorrows, temptations and trials, anxieties, weaknesses, necessities, injuries,
slanders, rebukes, humiliations, confusions, corrections, and contempt. For
these are helps to virtue. These are the trials of Christ's recruit. These form
the heavenly crown. For a little brief labor I will give an everlasting crown,
and for passing confusion, glory that is eternal....
The
key sentence I think there is “For these are helps to virtue.” Later in chapter
54 of that book, he creates a dichotomy between “nature,” which stands of the
corporeal, and “grace,” which stands for the spiritual. I’m not going to quote
it, but it’s quite a list of contrasts between nature and grace. He concludes
that rhetorical tour de force with this:
The
more, then, nature is held in check and conquered, the more grace is given.
Every day the interior man is reformed by new visitations according to the
image of God....
So
then the mortifications of the body he advocates are a process of personal
reform to build virtue. How is this different than Gnosticism? In Gnosticism
the body is just evil. In à Kempis the body is a temptation from which you can
succumb to sin. There is a subtle distinction. If you want to ensure yourself
of purity, if you want to ensure virtue, radically eliminate the temptations.
Actually even more than elimination. Train your body through asceticism and
excoriations to not find pleasure in the corporeal. It’s not that the corporeal
is evil for à Kempis, though his language sometimes slips to sound that way,
but something to be feared. It’s a view of Christianity that suggests you need
to suffer in order to love, and to be ready for when real suffering comes your
way you induce suffering to yourself to build strength.
In
the fifty-fifth chapter, he brings this to full expression:
Thus
nature itself, which You created good and right, is considered a symbol of vice
and the weakness of corrupted nature, because when left to itself it tends
toward evil and to baser things. The little strength remaining in it is like a
spark hidden in ashes. That strength is natural reason which, surrounded by
thick darkness, still has the power of judging good and evil, of seeing the difference
between true and false, though it is not able to fulfill all that it approves
and does not enjoy the full light of truth or soundness of affection.
It
is not that nature is evil but that it tends to evil if left unchecked
Commnet
9:
In
Book Three à Kempis provides the objective of all this discipline. In chapter
49 he tells us through the voice of Christ, “You must put on the new man. You
must be changed into another man.” He builds on that in chapter 53, again
through the voice of Christ:
If
you completely conquer yourself, you will more easily subdue all other things.
The perfect victory is to triumph over self. For he who holds himself in such
subjection that sensuality obeys reason and reason obeys Me in all matters, is
truly his own conqueror and master of the world.
And
then augments this point further in chapter 56, again in the voice of Christ:
My child, the more you
depart from yourself, the more you will be able to enter into Me. As the giving
up of exterior things brings interior peace, so the forsaking of self unites
you to God. I will have you learn perfect surrender to My will, without
contradiction or complaint.
The
subjugation of oneself for the self of Christ is the spiritual objective of
every Christian. à Kempis is right on target with this. We get this from St.
Paul in Galatians, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in
me” (Gal 2:20). I think it’s Fulton Sheen who phrases it as every Christian
needs a heart transplant, replacing one’s heart with that of Christ’s. St.
Catherine of Siena actually has a mystical experience where her heart is
exchanged with Christ’s heart.
What’s
in question, then, is how one arrives at this objective. The à Kempis way is
strict asceticism and withdrawal from the world. However, St. Paul wasn’t a
recluse. While Christ had his 40 days in the desert, he also had the wedding
feast at Cana, Passover dinners, and engaged large crowds for healing and
feeding. The history of Christian spirituality is varied on how to achieve this
heart replacement. The desert fathers start this asceticism and reclusion. The
monastics modify it by segregating themselves away from the heart of the world
but certainly more engaged than the desert hermits. In the twelfth century you
start getting the itinerant orders, the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the
Carmelites (to a lesser degree), and then later followed by the Jesuits who
engage society. And from the sixteenth century on to ours we get what I’ll call
the charitable orders, the Vincentians, the Sisters of Charity, the Little
Sisters of the Poor, the orders who embrace society to feed, educate, and cure
the needy. One can say this culminates in Mother Teresa’s brand of
spirituality. So then one can see the trajectory of Christian spirituality as
going from the desert to the multitude, just as in the course of Christ’s
journey.
The
à Kempis way is quite narrow, and even anachronistic for its own time. However,
for those that are attracted to this brand of spirituality, the book is a
perfect guide. Most of us, mix and match our forms of spirituality, and so we
still can get many benefits from his advice.
###
Note:
I did not have any comments on Book 4, “An Invitation to Holy Communion.”
###
Final Review
I
may be an outlier when it comes to The
Imitation of Christ. I don’t find it
engaging, either as a devotional or as a guide.
This was my second read and it remains at three stars.
Yes,
there are parts that very spiritual.
That’s why it’s three stars and not one.
But there are also parts that are dry, very dry, parts where the advice
is extremely ascetic, parts where the recommendations require disengagement
from the world, and parts I felt that were semi-gnostic. One has to balance the spiritual with the
corporeal, and not everything involved with the corporeal is bad or harmful for
one’s soul. Ultimately, if we are
granted heavenly existence, our bodies will be reunited with our souls, and so
our bodies are not inherently base. In
many places à Kempis presents the flesh as detestable. This didn’t sit well with me.
Perhaps
part of the extreme ascetic and disengagement from the world was because of the
times it was written. In the early 15th
century, Europe was still undergoing the Black Plague, the Church was in
schism, and there was a lot of social turmoil.
It was a difficult time, and what is strange is that in a time of
declining monasteries, the authors of were advocating a return to monastic
life. This was completely understandable. It was the Benedict Option of its day. One can understand it but it feels
anachronistic for today.
Besides
disengagement, the authors (there are more than one under the Thomas à Kempis nom de plume) do provide consolation for
a devout life. They do coach and
inspire. This is the most read devotional
in the Christian world other than the Bible, and is a must read.
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