 Welcome to The Commentaries, a podcast series from Tan in which you'll learn how to read and understand history's greatest Catholic works from today's greatest Catholic scholars. In every series of The Commentaries, your expert host will be your personal guide to not just read the book, but to live the book, shining the light of its eternal truths into our modern darkness. Visit tancommentaries.com to get your copy of the book and to subscribe for access to all the great reading plans, new episodes, bonus content and exclusive deals for listeners of The Commentaries. Hello and welcome back. I'm Father Robert Nixon, a Benedictine monk and director of the Institute for Benedictine Studies at the Abbey of the Most Holy Trinity in New North Sea or Western Australia. And this is the commentary series on The Imitation of Christ by the great Thomas the Campus. Today is Day 17 in our series of podcasts and our final podcast in this series. We'll be looking today at Book 4, chapters 15 to 18. But before we delve into the content of these last few chapters of the work, let us pray earnestly to God, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. So we're continuing now with Book 4, and Book 4 deals specifically with the Blessed Sacrament, and this is extremely important, almost a kind of climax for the whole book. Because all of the stuff we've heard before about self-denial and so forth isn't an end in itself, but reaches its culmination in union with God, and this union is experienced most authentically in the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, by which we're united with the body and blood of Christ Himself. Chapter 15 tells us that the grace of devotion is obtained by humility and self-denial. And people sometimes wonder, you know, how do I get devotion? Because, you know, some people have it and other people don't seem to have it so much. He's telling us the way to get it, by the exercise of humility and self-denial. If we can consciously separate ourselves from our ego, constantly bring our ego under the control of our higher soul, then we certainly will advance in this devotion. We'll detach ourselves from lower things, and from the lower parts of ourselves, so that the higher things may flourish more dearly. By ceasing to be attached to the lower things, we become attached and devout to the higher things. And we hear Christ speaking to the disciple in this chapter. And he says, the Lord bestows His blessings there, where He finds the vessels empty. This is very mysterious, but by emptying ourselves of these extraneous things, inordinate attachments, or adversities, tribulations, trials and so forth, stresses, anxieties, lusts, we then make ourselves free to receive God. In our last chapter, in our last podcast, we talked about the importance of preparing our soul as a dwelling, of making it kind of clean and orderly. Another way of thinking about this is actually emptying it, because empty space in itself has a certain beauty and cleanness to it. And we're told that the Lord bestows His blessing where He finds the vessel empty. So we don't have to worry that if we empty ourselves of all these distractions and things, that we're going to remain empty. Of course we're not, because God's love is overflowing. And we'll fill us with things which are infinitely and incomparably more wonderful than whatever we've left behind. And continuing on this theme, he says, the more perfectly one forsakes the things below, and the more one dies to oneself by the contempt of oneself, the more speedily does grace come and enters more plentifully, and the higher it elevates the free heart. I think that's truly wonderful. Continuing with our next chapter, that we ought to lay open our necessities to Christ and crave His grace. And necessities in this case means needs. So we should be honest in telling God where we need help, and craving His grace, asking for His help. And this is written in the form of the disciples speaking to Christ. O most sweet and loving Lord, whom I now desire to receive with all devotion, thou know my weakness and the necessities which I endure, in what great evils and vices I immerse, how often I am oppressed, tempted, troubled and defiled. To thee I come for remedy, I pray to thee for comfort and succor. I think this is a wonderful prayer that we're fleeing to Christ, recognizing how much we need Him, and recognizing how much we need Him is a first prerequisite to being able to humble ourselves to ask for whatever it is that we're needed. In chapter 17 of a fervent and vehement desire to receive Christ, and this is very similar to what we've heard before, that when we receive Christ, we should receive Him as with love and desire, not just going through the mechanical motions of the mass, but rather with this true hunger for His bread, which is true life and for His blood, which brings us ultimate freedom from sin. And finally, chapter 18, and this is the very last chapter of the book. It tells us that a man be not a curious searcher into this sacrament, but a humble follower of Christ submitting his sense for holy faith. And it begins with Christ speaking, thou must beware of curious and unprofitable searching into this most profound sacrament if you will not sink into the depths of doubt. He that is a searcher of majesty shall be overwhelmed by glory. God is able to do more than humans can understand. A pious and humble inquiry after truth is tolerable, which is always ready to be taught, and studies to walk in the sound doctrine of the fathers. This is a very important point here, that if we kind of look too closely into the mysteries of this sacrament, if we strive to unravel it and to explain away everything, we actually then open ourselves up to all kinds of doubts. And he says that there's nothing wrong with, you know, searching after the truth in a kind of humble way. But to do this, we can be guided by the authorities of the church by our teaching of the Magisterium. And you know, I think a lot of people ponder about how Christ is present in the Blessed Sacrament. To be honest, actually Protestants seem to ponder about it more than a lot of Catholics do. And I wonder if it's better just to accept what Thomas Aquinas says, the idea of transubstantiation. There's a change of substance. Substance means what something really is. While the accidents, the appearance remains the same. So retains the appearance of bread and wine. But the substance, what it is, changes to the body and the blood of Jesus Christ. Now that, in fact, is not actually an explanation. That is just a statement of what the teaching of the church is. It doesn't explain how it's even possible. It's possible by the miraculous power of God. And that should be enough of an explanation. So faith supplies where the senses fail to quote another line from the great Eucharistic hymn of Thomas Aquinas. And even at his time, when Thomas Aquinas was writing, and this was in the 15th century, the movements of Protestantism were starting to stir. And one of these was a questioning of the doctrine of the real presence. And this questioning arose from the unwillingness of people just to accept the teachings of the church, humbly, the unwillingness of people to accept the mystery. As Catholics, we should accept this mystery and accept the teachings of the church, not to strive to understand what is infinitely beyond us. And if someone says, could you please explain to me how it works? Well, we don't actually explain it. We just say what the teaching of the church is. And that teaching is transubstantiation. Change of substance while the accidents remain the same. That is not an explanation, but it's as far as we need to go. Our real understanding of the sacrament arises from devotion, from the experience of grace, from the wonderful experience of participating or being united with the body and blood of Christ itself. And then he continues, some are grievously tempted about faith in the sacrament. But this is not to be imputed to them, but rather to the enemy. Be not anxious, stand not to dispute with thy thoughts, nor to answer the doubts which the devil suggests, but believe the words of God, believe his saints and prophets, and the wicked enemy will fly from you. It is often very profitable to the servants of God to suffer such things, for the devil tempts not unbelievers and sinners, whom he already surely possesses. But the faithful and devout, he many ways tempts and molests. Go forward, therefore, with a sincere and undoubting faith, and with a humble reverence approach this sacrament, and whatsoever you are not able to understand, commit securely to Almighty God. For God deceives thee not, but he is deceived, who trusteth too much in himself. Some wonderful words there, and he is saying that when doubts arise in people's minds, and this often happens even for very devout Catholics, and probably particularly for devout Catholics, because they tend to spend more time considering and reflecting upon such things, that these doubts are in fact a form of temptation from the devil, and people who are practising Catholics are probably not likely to be tempted into committing murder or theft or anything like that. But where the devil contempt us is by solving these questions, by making them like problematic issues with us. And I often hear people saying, I struggle with the presence of God in the Eucharist. Well, you know, why struggle? There's nothing to struggle with. He said, this is my body, this is my blood. That's what the church teaches. Maybe it's a lesson in humility. And if we look at where these desires to understand and everything come from, they often come from pride, and even for students of theology there can be an element of this. And often people study theology and then they find that their faith in fact has been shaken by that experience. He's telling us not, just go forward, secure in your faith and in your love. You know, God sometimes wants us to walk in darkness, because when we walk in darkness, we need to reach out our hand to hold his hand as he leads us forth into his wonderful light. So we've now reached the final section, the final chapter of this work, The Imitation of Christ. And as I said before, this is not the kind of book which you want to read through from beginning to end like a novel. The ideal approach I think is to read one chapter a day or maybe more than one chapter a day. Some of these chapters are extremely short, literally only one or two pages. So the format which we've followed in the course of this series of podcasts is, I think, a quite sound way of dividing the book up into manageable sections. And whether you go through each one of these just once a day or maybe once a week, or however it suits your own time schedule. To make this book your friend and your companion on your journey of faith, and it's a book which has been trusted by countless generations of Catholics, it's been loved by many saints, by many popes, and by many lay people. So let us commit all of our hopes to God and to The Imitation of Christ that has walked closely with Him, knowing that He is always walking closely with us. Let us try to cut out from our hearts any of the loves, attachments, aversions, which draw us away from Him to purify ourselves so that we may love that one great good, which is God alone. And we don't do this thing alone because we have with us also the Blessed Virgin Mary as the exemplar of this most perfect love of Christ. She loved Him with a love which transcended that of any other, a love which only a mother can experience. We have also the apostles, the martyrs. We have the writings of the great doctors of the Church. These are all here to guide us in our journey. Above all, we need simplicity, trust, faith, and fidelity. And that brings us to the end of our 17th session of this series of podcasts of The Study of The Imitation of Christ and brings us to the very end of this study. Thank you so much for listening and for joining me. And I pray sincerely that this book will guide you, that this reading experience will profit your soul and lead you to greater peace, tranquility, and detachment from earthly things so that your mind may be filled with the ineffable and eternal glory of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, to whom be all glory and honor forever and ever. Amen. This has been an episode of The Commentaries, a podcast brought to you by Tan. 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