
The Imitation of Christ with a Commentary
and Audio Files
by Father Thomas
á Kempis of the Canons Regular of
Mount St. Agnes (1380 - 1471)
A STUDY

The
following pages are dedicated to the Little Hearts entrusted by
God to Cloistered Poor Clare Colettine Nuns
CHAPTER 6
“WHEN
a man desires a thing too much,
he at once becomes ill at ease. A proud and avaricious
man never rests, whereas he who is poor and humble of
heart lives in a world of peace. An unmortified man
is quickly tempted and overcome in small, trifling evils;
his spirit is weak, in a measure carnal and inclined
to sensual things; he can hardly abstain from earthly
desires. Hence it makes him sad to forego them; he is
quick to anger if reproved. Yet if he satisfies his
desires, remorse of conscience overwhelms him because
he followed his passions and they did not lead to the
peace he sought. True peace of heart, then, is found
in resisting passions, not in satisfying them. There
is no peace in the carnal man, in the man given to vain
attractions, but there is peace in the fervent and spiritual
man.” |
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Desire
Think
of it. What essentially is desire? Before we look at this more closely,
we would do well to bear in mind the counsel of Holy Mother the
Church who always admonishes us to avoid “the occasions of sin”.
What does she mean? She is telling us to avoid “the people, the
places, or the things which lead us into sin”, which is to say,
those things before which we know we are weak and prone to sin.
In her holy wisdom, Mother Church teaches us to know ourselves,
invites us to clearly and candidly assess our weaknesses, for only
in recognizing them and acknowledging our weakness before these
occasions of sin, can we begin to prepare ourselves to lead holy
lives, which is nothing less than lives free from sin.
We gravitate toward what we desire; our desire motivates us to precisely
the people, places and things in which we had formerly found illicit
enjoyment and through which we had subsequently sinned. We are like
moths hovering in a centripetal circle around a dangerous flame,
moving ever closer with each orbit, telling ourselves that we will
not sin “this time” … but we still desire something, something perversely
vicarious through bringing ourselves in proximity to what we know,
to what we had already learned is not good for us, still attracted
by the fatal beauty and lurid warmth of the flame and fixated on
its lithe and lissome dance, we circle imperceptibly closer. “Just
a bit more”, we urge ourselves, even as we feel our resolve gradually
diminishing, until the flame licks our wings and seduces us into
the sultry magma of our own passion. And we sin. Again. We thought
ourselves strong enough to resist what had seduced us into sin again
and again, trusting to our own strength instead of the Wisdom of
God and the wise counsel of our Holy Mother the Church who tells
us that even with the gift of Actual Grace we stand in peril before
the occasion of sin that has trapped us again and again. Better
to flee the fire than test your strength against it. It will wither
every time. But you do not have wisdom yet, and in your insolence
you think yourself stronger than others, and wiser … You are a fool.
So what are we to say about the nature of desire, apart from the
danger posed by the occasion of sin? Essentially, desire is a longing
for what we do not possess, or if we do legitimately possess it,
it is the absence of the fulfillment, and the accompanying anticipation
of it. A man may desire his wife, or a wife her husband, and anticipating
fulfillment, longs for it. There is no sin in this. Desire itself,
then, is not evil, and consequently is not intrinsically sinful.
It is disordered desire that is sinful; the desire
for that which is not legitimately ours, but belongs to another.
It is theft awaiting the opportunity … the occasion. It is the illegitimate
possession of something or someone that belongs to another. This
is disordered desire; it is desire not ordered toward an
authentic and enduring good — but brings evil out of another’s legitimate
good, and as such is a perversion of the good. It is an act
of debasing what is intrinsically noble, of vitiating what was created
good, to evil and selfish ends. And all selfish ends are evil.
Disordered desire is ever restless, ever seeking satisfaction,
gratification, satiation. No sooner is the desire fulfilled than
another evil desire arises to replace it and when that, in turn,
is fulfilled, the former desire is replenished and awakens. It is
unremitting restlessness ordered only to the satisfaction of the
self which, in justice, remains perpetually unsatisfied.
Father Thomas succinctly reminds us of this. Hence, he tells us
that peace is found not in gratifying the incessant and ultimately
insatiable promptings of the passions, but in resisting them — as
one who has acquired wisdom and knowing the evil to inevitably ensue,
assiduously avoids it, taking refuge in God instead Who alone can
fulfill the deepest longings of the heart.
Hence the wise man is humble, for he knows that there is little
of virtue in him, and even less of strength … and nothing of holiness.
In this humility man turns toward God. With the holy Apostle Peter,
we should ever say, again and again,
“Lord
… to Whom else can we go?”
for nothing in this world can satisfy the longing in my soul. “Only
Thee, Lord. Only Thee.”
Your
Little Sisters in Christ
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Version of Commentary
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Totally Faithful to the
Sacred
Deposit of Faith
entrusted to the Holy See in Rome
“Scio
opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti
verbum Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum”
“I
know your works ... that you have but little power,
and yet you have kept My word, and have not denied My
Name.”
(Apocalypse 3.8)
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