 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 mum 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 the Campus. Today is day two in this series and we'll be covering book one, chapters six through eleven of the TAN edition of the work. But before we get into the pages that we'll be talking about today, let's begin with a short prayer in which we will call upon the assistance and grace of God to help us to imitate 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, help us imitate Christ's ways, and live His gospel all thine days. Amen. Book one, chapters six to eleven of this wonderful work, The Imitation of Christ, continue with advice on a number of spiritual topics. And he covers a number of different things. We begin with of inordinate affections, next in chapter seven of flying vain hope in pride, in chapter eight of shunning too much familiarity, a very important thing, and chapter nine of obedience and subjection. Chapter ten of avoiding superfluity of words, chapter eleven finally of acquiring peace and zeal for spiritual progress. I'm going to go through these chapters and share with you some of the thoughts and reflect a little bit upon them. And our first chapter, which we're dealing with today is on inordinate affections. Now what are inordinate affections, you might ask, inordinate affections are excessive attachments to people, things or ideas or really anything. And God created us so that our ultimate attachment, our ultimate desire, should be for God alone for the joys of heaven. And in fact, the joys of heaven aren't separable from our desire for God. This doesn't mean that we're not intended to have feelings for anything else. Of course, we're intended to love the Blessed Virgin Mary, to admire the saints that we're called upon to love our brothers and sisters in this mortal life. But all of these other loves, apart from the love of God, need to be done in a properly ordered way. And St. Bernard of Clairvaux said, the only thing which we should love without measure is God Himself. And that is something which Thomas A. Kempis would certainly agree with. I mentioned in the last episode how Thomas A. Kempis copied all the works or the Bible by hand four times. He also copied all the works of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. There was a great inspiration to him. So he begins by saying, whenever a man desires anything inordinately, he is presently disquieted within himself. The proud and covetous are never easy. The poor and humble of spirit live in much peace. The man that is not yet perfectly dead to himself is soon tempted and overcome with small and trifling things. See that his weak in spirit and in a manner yet carnal and inclined to sensible things can hardly withdraw himself from earthly desires. When he says sensible things, this is a word, I guess, a slightly archaic expression now. But what it really means is things pertaining to our senses, to our physical senses. So in other words, the things which we see and taste and hear and so forth. He's telling us to be detached from these things, not to become inordinately attached, not to be filled with excessive desire. He tells us that the proud and covetous are never easy. And you think about the truth of that. The more attached we are to the things of this world, the more we are subject to its pains and tragedies. And these, of course, are very many. Everything in this world ultimately is either going to be separated from us or we are going to be separated from them. So it behooves us to moderate our affections for them, our attachment to them. So that we're kind of half ready to say goodbye to them at any given moment. So these are a recipe for the greatest possible peace of mind, which we can find. And in the practical reflection to this chapter, we find the peace of soul next to the grace of God is the greatest of blessings. And we should spare no pains to maintain it within ourselves. And excessive attachment, these disordered or inordinate affections, all are what separate us from that. And I'm sure from experience, we've all learned that lesson, you know, that there is a kind of love, which is Christian charity, but there is a kind of love, which goes beyond this and attachment, which, which never leads to any real happiness. The next chapter is on flying from vain hope and pride. And this is kind of recapitulating what was talked about when he spoke about humility, of cultivating a humble opinion of oneself. And he tells us confide not in thyself, but place thy hope in God. Do what is in thy power, and God will be with thy good will. So we can only do what we can do in this life, you know, and often people find themselves trying to do things which are completely beyond them. But in the end, everything comes down to the grace of God. I mean, even our own abilities, what we seem to be able to do of our own initiative really is just the exercise of the power and grace of God within us, because he made us from nothing. Everything we are and can do comes from him. So for this reason, he says, be not proud of thy own works. For the judgments of God are different from the judgments of men. And oftentimes that displeases him, which pleases men. So here, we're not after human praise and approval. Rather, we're after doing what is pleasing and right in the sight of God. And I mean, often this will be recognized and admired by other people. And there's nothing wrong with that. But on the other hand, that shouldn't be the goal in itself. The next chapter, chapter eight deals with of showing too much familiarity. And this is a point which was quite important in medieval society. And in fact, until relatively recent times, it was considered in polite to be overly familiar with someone. In other words, to treat someone who you've just met as if they've been a good friend of yours for a long time. Or to treat someone who is your superior in some way, either in their position or in a particular professional capacity, as if they were your equal. And in our Australian culture, we're particularly prone to this because we were founded as a convict nation. And so we tend to make an idol of egalitarianism. And I suspect it's probably the same, although I've noticed to a lesser degree in the United States, as it is here in Australia. So he's saying to respect the status, the sovereignty of each individual citizen of each person, not to be kind of invading them with over familiarity, not to be assuming either that we can trust them or that they can trust us. And this is a good principle, especially in religious life, where we consciously avoid having particular friendships with our confreters, our fellow monks, or fellow sisters, as the case might be. So he says, begins with a quotation from the book of Ecclesiasticus. Open not thy heart to every man, but treat of thine affairs with a man that is wise and fearless God. So be careful about who you open up to. Exercise a little caution and prudence. He says, going on from this, we must have charity for all. But familiarity is not expedient. There's a big difference between charity and familiarity. Charity is something which we owe to all of our fellow human beings. Familiarity is something which is only to be acquired through a process of time, through a process of judgment and discernment. I think we read also somewhere in the book of Ecclesiasticus, let your acquaintances be many, but your advisers be one in a thousand. And there's a lot of truth for that. And the practical reflections were advised to avoid worldly company, useless conversations, and those overflowing and attachments of the heart which are neither regulated nor governed by the law of God. For all of these things dissipate the soul, withdraw it from God, hinder it from being recollected, and deprive it of that interior spirit which is so necessary for salvation. They expose it to many dangers and insensibly subvert all interior discipline. This is an extremely important point here that we need this caution and prudence and restraint in order to keep ourselves focused on what really matters. And I think it's fair to say that there's a certain element of Stoic influence in the writings of Thomas the Campus, one of the writers who he quotes very often is Seneca. Now, Seneca was a Roman philosopher of the Stoic school. No one's really sure if he was Christian or not. There are letters in existence supposedly between Seneca and St. Paul, but whether they're genuine scholars don't know for sure. But what he says in his writings about meditation on death, about restraint of speech, about moderation and judicious forethought for all of our actions, all of these things I think are echoed strongly in Thomas the Campus. In the next chapter he deals with the difficult subject for many people of obedience and subjection. And of course, he's writing primarily to people who have religious superiors over them, to canons and monks and nuns. So some of what he says doesn't apply to people in secular life, but a lot of it does, you know, because we've got obedience not only to the church hierarchy, but also to our superiors at work and to people in our own family as well. So he says that it is a very great thing to stand in obedience, to live under a superior and not be at our own disposal. It is much more secure to be in a state of subjection than in authority. And there's a lot of sense in this, because as soon as we get into authority, we're morally and practically responsible not only for our own selves, but also for the welfare and the salvation of others. So, you know, to see that being under subjection to acting out of obedience can actually give us this kind of freedom at times. And we often quick to resent that, but rather we should count it as a blessing. And the next chapter then, another key one and very important to our culture today, of avoiding the superfluity of words. In other words, avoiding talking too much. And this is something to which a lot of people are prone. We talk too much talking for no good purpose, just chattering away, filling in empty silences. But these silences are in fact a privileged moment to contemplate God and divine things. And he begins this chapter by saying, Fly the tumult of men as much as thou canst. For treating of worldly affairs hinders very much, although they be disgorsed of with a simple attention. I wish I could have often been silent than I had not been in company. But why are we so willing to talk and discourse with one another since we seldom return to silence without prejudice to our conscience? So this vain talking, this empty filling in of time with chatter is something we need to guard ourselves against. In monastic life, this is a particularly important thing. We cultivate strict silence. And at other times, even when it's not strict silence, we tend to prefer to be comfortable with an atmosphere of contemplation. So I think it's a good thing to consider. For each person to consider, to ask themselves honestly, am I talking too much? You know, if I'm in a conversation with one other person, am I talking more than 50% of the time? If I'm in a conversation with four people, am I talking more than 25% of the time? If I'm in a conversation with 10 people, am I talking more than 10% of the time? If the answer is yes, then that means that you are talking too much. So I think this reflection is a wonderful guard against that. And it highlights the dangers of it to cultivate silence. And it's something which happens all too seldom in our modern world. And finally, our last chapter for today of acquiring peace and zeal for spiritual progress. So the acquisition of peace is something which we're all called to. Ultimately, we're called to the peace of heaven. But by cultivating peace in our own heart, even during this mortal life, we contribute to the peace of the world. Because you think about it, people who are in conflicts all the time with others normally don't have inner peace. And that's exactly why they get into conflicts with others so much easily. And we're counseled here. We are too much taken up with our own passions and too solicitous about transitory things. And seldom do we perfectly overcome so much as one vice, nor are we earnestly bent upon our daily progress. And therefore we remain cold and tepid. In other words, we're focused so much on the things of the present world that we forget about our progress in the spiritual life, which ultimately is the key which is going to unlock the door to eternal peace. So let's pray that God may give us that gift of peace, that desire for peace at the very beginning. And that brings us to the end of day two in our study of the imitation of Christ. Thank you so much for listening and for joining me as we go on this journey deeper into our spiritual lives. Next time we'll be continuing our discussion of book one, dealing with chapters 12 through to 19. And until then, may God bless you all. Thank you. This has been an episode of The Commentaries, a podcast brought to you by Tan. 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