 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 Norsia, Western Australia. And this is The Commentaries series on the great book The Imitation of Christ by Thomas Herkampus. This is a very wonderful book, the second best-selling book out of all time after only the Bible and A Great Treasure, published to you in a great edition by TAN Books. Today is day six of our series and we'll be continuing with book two of the four books which together make up The Imitation of Christ. And this is actually book two is the shortest of the books out of the four. It consists only of 12 chapters. Yesterday we talked about book two chapters one through six. Today we're going to be talking about book two chapters seven through ten. And we begin with the love of Jesus above all things. Blessed is he who knows what it is to love Jesus and to despise himself for the sake of Jesus. We must quit what we love for this beloved because Jesus will be loved alone above all things. The love of things created is deceitful and inconstant. The love of Jesus is faithful and enduring. He that cleaveth to creatures shall forewith them. He that embraces Jesus shall stand firm forever. A wonderful summary of the entire idea of this chapter that our greatest joy lies in the love of Jesus that we must prefer him to all created things. We might think this might seem a little bit strange to some people because you know Jesus lived in a distant time and place and we didn't see him with our own eyes or hear him with our own ears. But the love of Jesus is much more than this kind of personal or human love because Jesus was not only a human being but he was the divinity itself made flesh. So in him we see the infinite glory, infinite power, infinite mercy and infinite wisdom of this eternal and ever blessed God. So to love Jesus in fact is not like a sentimental attachment to a figure in a holy picture rather it is a love of the ineffable splendor and majesty of God, this ultimate and perfect freedom and beatitude and it's what every heart is striving for in one form or another whether we know it by the name of Jesus or whether we seek for it in some other form. But to seek for it in another form of course is a fundamental mistake because Jesus alone is the perfect manifestation of this divine glory. And as he says, the love of created things is deceitful and inconstant. Now that might sound like a pretty dramatic statement but if we think about it all created things are finite and of limited duration so that our purest love of earthly things of other people and so forth must eventually be separated, must come to an end. And what's more because they're not infinite they can never fully satisfy the longings of the human heart. But if we embrace Jesus we shall stand firm forever because he himself is the eternal king of the universe. The next chapter continues this theme of love of Jesus but moves on to of familiar friendship with Jesus or closeness to Jesus in other words and we're encouraged in this chapter to have Jesus as our companion, as our guide, as our personal teacher which is a pretty amazing thought if you think about it you know if we could to give a simple analogy if a person had Superman as their butler and personal assistant that would be a very you know kind of cool thing. But we've got here the invitation of having Jesus as our constant companion and friend and defender and Jesus of course is an infinite being infinitely powerful much more than anything we could possibly imagine. He tells us that Jesus is present when Jesus is present all things go well and nothing seems difficult. But when Jesus is absent everything is hard. When Jesus speaks not within our comfort is worthless but if Jesus speaks but one word we feel great consolation happy the hour when Jesus calls from tear to joy of spirit. How hard and dry are you without Jesus how foolish and vain if you desire anything aside from Jesus is not this a greater loss than if thou were to lose the whole world. So there's great truth in this and the first part everything goes well when Jesus is here with us and everything goes badly when he's away with us and you know this might be hard to recognize in life at times because it can sometimes seem like you know things are going badly when we think our religious life is in order our spiritual life is in order. But when we look back at our lives I think most of us will see that the happiest times the times of the greatest peace and so forth are generally those times when our relationship with Christ has been the strongest and if we look back and see any you know dark patches or difficult patches in our life that will almost always be when we were going astray from the faith a little bit. So you know there's a definite connection definite relationship there. He continues then in the next chapter which is chapter 9 of the want of all comforts. Now as I mentioned before the word want in our modern usage is more or less treated as a synonym for desire but in slightly earlier English it was treated as meaning a lack of so when he says of the want of all comforts it really means of the lack of all comforts and he says it is not hard to despise all human comfort when we have divine but it is much and very much to be able to want all comfort both human and divine to be willing to bear this interior benishment for God's honour and to seek oneself in nothing nor to think of one's merits. He rides at ease that is carried by the grace of God. So this is a wonderful thoughts here that it's easy to rise above human things when we feel the presence of God with us when we feel his grace but there are times when we don't feel his grace when we don't feel his consolation and he says this is the time when we can make a truly meritorious exhibition of our faith because you know we're walking in a state of dryness or darkness which happens I think in pretty much everyone's spiritual life after a few years but then this is the opportunity of really coming to a deeper faith of showing the strength of our faith and of growth in virtue. It's a time for denial of the self and trusting ultimately in God. He gives us the example of the Holy Martyr Lawrence and tells us that the Holy Martyr Lawrence overcame the world with his prelate because he despised whatever seemed delightful in this world and for the love of Christ he unrepiningly suffered the high priest of God Sixtus whom he loved exceedingly to be taken away from him. He overcame therefore the love of man by the love of the Creator and instead of pure comfort he had in man he made a choice rather of God's will and I think this is wonderful. This is talking about the St Lawrence the Martyr and his Pope because he was a deacon in Rome the Pope at the time Pope Sixtus was a good friend of his and he could have hidden away behind the Pope and tried to spare the Pope from Martyrdom as well but instead he saw that it was the will of God that both of them should be martyred and he gladly accepted that. He turned his back on earthly and human comfort to do the will of God and now of course he inherited the kingdom of glory. In chapter 10 we deal with gratitude for the grace of God and this is so important. We've given so much in our lives than grace we're given the faith we're given the fact that we're here today we're alive we're listening to this podcast we're reading or have read the imitation of Christ we have our guardian angel protecting us the Blessed Virgin Mother praying for us and helping us we have Jesus who saved us from our sins. Our gratitude towards God for all of this should be literally overflowing but how easy it is to forget that gratitude. In chapter 11 and chapter 12 he talks about the cross of Jesus as being our kind of exemplar as being the signpost on the path which we should be following. Chapter 11 is entitled of the small number of the lovers of the cross of Jesus. He says Jesus has now many lovers of his heavenly kingdom but few that are willing to bear his cross. He has many that are desirous of comfort but few of tribulation. He finds many companions at his table but few of his abstinence. All desire to rejoice with him but few are willing to suffer with him. Many follow Jesus to the breaking of bread but few to the drinking of the chalice of his passion. So I think this is very important that Christ calls us certainly to a life of joy and peace but we need to remember that this joy and peace is approached only by the road of the cross that our master who went before us suffered terribly and that we can't expect to be exempted from this suffering ourselves. Every human being has their fair share of suffering whether they like it or not but it's our choice whether we undergo this suffering in union with that of Christ and the cross or if we just resent it and kind of fight against it. So this union with Christ means embracing his companionship both in times of joy and in times of adversity. We continue then in the next chapter which is called of the royal way of the holy cross. He tells us that to many this seems a hard saying, deny thyself take up thy cross and follow Jesus but it will be much harder to hear the last word depart from the year cursed into everlasting fire for they that are at present willingly to hear and follow the word of the cross shall not then be afraid of eternal condemnation. This sign of the cross will be in heaven when the Lord shall come to judge then all the servants of the cross who in their lifetime have conformed to themselves to him that was crucified shall come to Christ their judge with great confidence. Why then are they afraid to take up thy cross which leads to the kingdom? So there's great truth in this and elsewhere Thomas a campus tells us that no one is free from the cross in this world. If we look around everyone rich and poor young and old everyone has their share of suffering we're not going to escape it but what we can do is embrace it in the spirit of the cross embrace it with courage with patience with obedience and then it can become for us the path of salvation. How very true this is how often we fear a little suffering we fall into resentment we might even kind of direct our anger against God himself but in the scale of things for most of us our earthly sufferings are quite small God never burdens us with anything which is beyond our capacity to bear. In times of difficulty I think we need only to consider the passion of Christ and the terrible suffering he underwent for our sake to realize that whatever it is we're being asked to put up with today you know it's probably really not so bad and this now brings us to the end of book two of the imitation of Christ which was entitled Admonitions Concerning the Interior Life. Thank you so much for listening and joining me on this great journey into the mysteries of the spiritual life. Next time we'll be commencing on book three which is called The Book of Internal Consolation and we're going to be covering in our next episode book three chapters one to six and I will look forward very much to speaking to you then until then may Almighty God bless you and may you walk closely with Jesus our Lord and Savior. 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.