 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, 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 Norcia, Western Australia. And this is The Commentaries series on The Imitation of Christ by the great Thomas Akampus. Today is day one of this series and we'll be covering book one, chapters one through five of the Tan edition of the book. But before we get into the actual pages of this amazing work, let's begin with a short prayer followed by a brief look at the historical significance and the influence of The Imitation of Christ. We begin in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Enlighten, Lord, our souls and hearts, and to our minds, thy grace impart. Lead us by thy gentle hand, teaching us to understand the wisdom of thine only Son, the humble, patient, holy One, Helper, as imitate Christ's ways, and live his gospel all our days. Amen. The Imitation of Christ, the book which we'll be discussing in this series, is the second best-selling book of all time, second only to the Bible itself. How did this come to be? A fascinating question. The author of The Imitation of Christ, Thomas the Kempers, lived from about 1380 until 1471. He was born in a small German village known as Kempers, hence his surname. Of fairly humble stock, his father was a blacksmith, his mother was a teacher at a very small local school. From an early age, Thomas showed great holiness, as well as great sharpness of mind and intelligence. In due course, he went and joined a group called the Brotherhood of the Common Life, which was a kind of religious organization, but without any formal vows, and he studied there for several years. After this, he felt called to commit himself more fully, and so he entered the Order of Saint Augustine as a canon regular. He then had a very long career living within his monastic community. Of course, his exceptional intelligence and learning meant that he could very easily have risen to great heights, either in the church or in the civil hierarchy, but instead he chose the path of humility. He served as the chronicler of his own community. He was responsible also for giving arms, and he developed a great reputation as a teacher, as a preacher, and also as a spiritual counselor. It's as a spiritual counselor that he speaks to us through the imitation of Christ. And this book has been tremendously popular since it first appeared. It's appeared in over 2,000 different editions, being translated into virtually every language imaginable. The Tan edition of it is quite wonderful, a very good translation, very clearly laid out, and this is a book which, if I might say, has influenced countless generations of Catholics, including a great many saints, people like Saint Ignatius Loyola, as well as a lot of popes. Pope Pius X, Pius XII, and so forth. It's been favorite reading for so many, and it's the kind of book which you can pick up and just read one paragraph or one chapter a day and find that you've got enough material there to meditate on quite profoundly for the course of the whole day. It's divided into four separate books or large sections. So these four separate sections are then divided into smaller chapters. Many of the chapters are quite short, so we'll be getting through quite a number of them in the course of each of our sessions. Well, in this first session, we're going to talk about the beginning of it. So we're going to be talking about book one, chapters one through five. And this plays an important foundation for the whole work which we'll be pursuing. So our very first chapter is called On the Imitation of Christ and the Contempt of All the Veneties of the World. And this is so important, almost the key point of the entire book. Because Christ's life, His actions, His words, His thoughts all give us the ultimate lesson in the people that God wants us to be. So Christ, alone of all humanity, is the exemplar, the perfection of the Christian life. Of course, by definition, He is the ultimate Christian. So this conscious imitation of Christ is something which we should all cultivate. But an important prerequisite of imitating Christ, of putting Christ above everything else, is that we can overcome, that we should overcome our attachments to the veneties of this passing world. And this is something which Tempest talks about very many times. That we all find ourselves, whether willingly or unwillingly, ensnared and entangled within the things of this world. And I mean, of course, it's impossible completely to avoid being involved in the world. Even as a monk, I'm involved in many different things. And sometimes these things can become distractions. So He tells us that we need to begin our study by a meditation on the life of Christ. To imagine what He did. To imagine almost to visualize the kind of person that He was. And then to consciously imitate it. It doesn't mean imitating it in like a fake or artificial way. But trying to take on board His characteristics of patience, humility, charity, obedience to God the Father as much as we are able. And He tells us in this first chapter that it is vanity to seek after the riches which must perish and trust in them. It is vanity also to be ambitious of honors and to raise oneself to a high station. It is vanity to follow the lusts of the flesh and to desire that for which thou must afterwards be grievously punished. It is vanity to wish for a long life and to take little care of leading a good life. It is vanity also to mind this present life and not look forward unto those things which are to come. So this is the key point. Vanity in this context needs to be understood as futility, as something pointless, something which is foolish and ill-advised. So we need to recognize that everything in this world is passing to keep our hearts and our minds fixed on that eternal world. And we do this of course by following the example which Jesus offers. So then our next chapter is on having a humble opinion of oneself, on humility. And it is often said that humility is the foundation of all the other virtues. If we think about the very first sin, not the sin of Adam and Eve, but going back even further to the sin of Satan and the wicked angels who followed him, it was one of pride. It was seeking to become more than what they were intended to be. And this is something to which human beings are often very prone, either through insecurity or through a kind of compulsion to achieve, to assert ourselves in some ways. And in trying to become who or more than what God created us to be, we actually end up becoming less than what we could be. So there's a certain wisdom and simplicity in humility which rewards all of those who find it. It's much easier for a person who is humble to be content than it is for a person who's pride. And he talks about this. He says, So this is all keeping in mind one's own fragility and limitedness, not putting oneself down unnecessarily but thinking, you know, who am I? Why should I be giving primacy of place to myself all the time? And instead to give that primacy of place to God, to work for the glory of God rather than the glory of self. Because in finding this glory of God, we find what alone can give us true and lasting happiness. The next chapter is on the doctrine of truth and of course truth is so important. Jesus tells us that he is the truth itself. And this is a truth which cannot be articulated in words or concepts. A truth which comes through a personal encounter with the risen Christ. And from this chapter, Thomas writes it to us. And what need we concern ourselves about the terms of philosophy? He to whom the eternal word speaks is set at liberty from a multitude of opinions. From one word are all things. And this one thing speaks. And this is from the beginning, which also speaks to us. Without this word, no one understands or judges rightly. And what is this word? This word is the word of God, the Logos, who was incarnate in the person of Jesus. Who was expressed perfectly only in the person of Jesus. So to come to know Jesus is, in fact, to come to know truth. And you know, he talks to says, don't be too distracted with philosophy, with art and science. He's not putting down those things in themselves. I mean, after all, he was a scholar and a teacher. He certainly encouraged his students to pursue these things to the best of their ability. But in doing that, it's important to recognize that there are only tools for the journey. They're not the absolute truth in itself. They might help us from time to time in our search for the truth. They might help us do our job or our profession or whatever it is. But in the end, they're not the ultimate truth. And he talks about this. He says that we should recognize how quickly the glory of this world passes away. Would that our lives have been answerable to our learning, that they would have studied and read well. How many perish in the world through vain learning, who care little for the service of God. He is truly great, who is great in charity. He is truly great, who is little in his own eyes. And Holdeth as Nort, the pinnacle of honor. He is truly prudent, who looks upon all earthly things as nothing, that he may gain Christ. And you know, when we hear these words to look upon all earthly things as nothing, we shouldn't think this is kind of negative, having a negative attitude towards God's creation or our fellow human beings, but rather putting them in their proper context. They're nothing, not in themselves, but nothing in comparison to the endless glory of God. And it's in this context that Thomas the campus is calling us carefully to reassess our own preoccupations, our own attachments. Chapter four talks about prudence in our understanding. And he tells us we must not be easy in giving credit to every word and suggestion, but carefully and leisurely weigh the matter according to God. Alas, such is our weakness that we often more readily believe and speak of another that which is evil than that which is good. And how true this is. I mean, human nature is such that we've all got a propensity to enjoy hearing scandals about other people, that we somehow love to enjoy also sharing these scandals. And I think we're told to kind of pull up a little bit to think, what are we actually doing in all of these? We're told that we shouldn't credit everything we hear. And this is a particular danger these days in which we're told such a multitude of things by family and friends, but also by governments and media. We can't believe everything that we're told. We need to sit down with everything in the presence of Christ and think, you know, is this true? Is this not true? Or is it just one of the many things which might be true or might not be? You know, and then to treat it accordingly. And in this lies true prudence, this kind of power of discrimination, of not jumping to wrong conclusions. And Thomas tells us a good life makes a man wise according to God and expert in many things. The more humble a man is in himself, the more subject to God, the more wise will he be in all things and the more at peace. And this obedience to God, this subjection to God, I think the surest and most certain way of attaining peace and happiness in this life for whatever peace and happiness is possible in this life is by strict obedience to the commands of God, to the laws of church and so forth. And we're told in the practical reflections which follow this chapter and their practical reflections and prayers after each of the chapters, which I think make this 10 edition very wonderful, we're told that nothing is more opposite to charity or more fatal to salvation than the evil reports we make of one another, whether they be true or false, because they irritate the mind, disorder the heart, ferment divisions and imbitter hatreds. And because we cannot obtain God's pardon for them, unless we resolve in our confessions to repair the evil which we have done and to reconcile those who we have set at various. So this principle of speaking evil of no one, as far as we can possibly avoid it, is a very wise piece of advice. We finally move to our last chapter of reading the Scriptures and this is a practice which Thomas the Kempers loved himself. He's known to have copied the entire Bible by hand because this is in the days before printing or when printing was just beginning. He copied the entire Bible by hand no less than four times and what a huge job that would be if you can imagine. And he tells us that truth is to be sought for in holy Scripture, not eloquence. All holy Scripture ought to be read with that Spirit with which it was made. So he's telling us that we should read the Scriptures with a view to finding truth in them, not a view just becoming expert in the Scriptures so we can share it with other people or show off or whatever we might want to do. And in doing this we need to treat the Scriptures in their proper context, in the context in which they're written. And it's important to remember that our Catholic attitude towards the Scriptures is quite different of that from Protestants. Of course we accept the validity of Scriptures as the Word of God but they can be interpreted properly only in the context of the tradition of the church. So it's not up to each individual person to take Scripture and make of it what they will. The Scriptures speak to each person individually but in the end their correct interpretation is given to us through the tradition of the church. And we're told to read the sacred Scripture and the books of piety with the same Spirit in which they were written. That is to read them in a quest for truth, for instruction, for edification. So this again is asking us humility. Well I think if we keep our hearts fixed on this imitation of Christ, fixed on the cultivation of humility, prudence, moderation, restraint of speech, of grounding ourselves in the Scriptures, in the Scriptures and in the traditions of the church which ultimately can't be separated, we will advance far in the imitation of Christ. And in imitating Christ we will find this tremendous peace and contentment which He alone can give. And that brings us to the end of day one in our study of the imitation of Christ. Thank you so much for listening and for joining me on your journey to grow deeper in your spiritual life. Next time we'll be discussing Book 1, chapters 6 through 11 in which the author writes of pride, obedience, peace of mind and so much more. Until then, may God bless you all. This has been an episode of The Commentaries, a podcast brought to you by Tan. To follow the show, study more of the greatest Catholic classics and to support The Commentaries and other great free content from Tan. Visit tancommentaries.com to subscribe and use coupon code COM25 to get 25% off your next order including the imitation of Christ and countless more spiritual works to deepen your interior life and guide you to heaven.