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The Imitation of
Christ
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“Happy
is he to whom truth manifests itself, not in signs and
words that fade, but as it actually is. Our opinions,
our senses often deceive us and we discern very little. |
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Sister’s Commentary:
I.
Jesus Christ
says of himself,
“I
am the way, the Truth, and the Life”.
We can indeed seize truth by human effort and even attain to knowledge,
but always and in every respect it is wanting. Most often we
verge on the truth; we seize it in part, but never apprehend
it in its entirety. What we mean is this: whatever truthful statement
we can make about anything (presuming in the first place that it
is true), nevertheless fails to embrace the whole
truth concerning it.1
Ultimately, it is the Holy Spirit of God who reveals the totality
of truth to us.
However, instead of pursuing the Truth which leads ultimately to
God, we are quite satisfied to be led by idle curiosity to dead
ends and blind alleys that lead us no where. We are so remarkably
adept at trying to seek Truth where it is not to be found, instead
of looking to God and exposing our total being to his Word. Indeed,
much like Pontius Pilate, were we to see Truth with our waking eyes,
we still would not recognize it. Did not Pilate, even upon beholding
the Truth itself in the person of Jesus Christ standing before him,
even then insolently ask, “What is
Truth?”
Pilate was a politician, a governor — and not a philosopher. But
he was sufficiently educated to know that the question belonged
to the philosophers of his day, and though not counted among them,
he feigned their erudition, and in that pretension to knowledge
revealed not his (superficial) “knowledge”, but his blindness to
the Truth.
How very often we are purblind to what is immediately before us
and revealed in the circumstances of our daily lives, because we
are not aware of Christ Who comes to each of us in the sacrament
of the present moment. Instead of recognizing Him in our daily duties
we seek rather for meaning in all manner of obscurities, visions,
apparitions, and superfluities. Much like the Gnostics of old who
esteemed themselves to exclusively possess "secret knowledge" that
remained a mystery to the uninitiated, to the “common masses”, we
are eager to possess a “privileged knowledge”, a “special insight”,
locutions and visions accorded us alone, or few, and from
which others are excluded. It redounds to our self-importance, and
we deem ourselves “chosen”, special, among the few “select.” We
are filled with secret pride and we are jealous of our “knowledge”.
It invests us with a sense of exclusivity, prominence and pride
— and we are loathe to relinquish any part of this privileged state
by sharing it with others. Our poverty is not that we do do not
have enough, either materially or intellectually; our real poverty
is that we have far too much — and in failing to share it with others
we lose something profoundly greater in a sorry trade: God's grace
for the things of this world which perish, if we do not perish first!
Why? Because, “with what measure you mete, it shall be measured
to you again” 2 We keep our “possessions” and lose our
souls.
In a consumer society it is very hard not to accumulate things,
but ... here is the invitation to virtue! ... do we
then channel the excess to where it will serve and support others?
This is our challenge! Not to bury the talent, but to multiply it!
5
It is important for us to observe that the problems with which we
have to grapple are no different from those which Thomas à Kempis
himself had to address and work through 500 years ago.
“Nihil
sub sole novum,” “there is nothing new under the sun”!
3
The packaging is just different.
Despite a superabundance of everything, man is empty, unsatisfied....
man is in many ways a soul in mourning for meaning and purpose.
Superabundance is smothers us, our inner emptiness suffocates us,
and our eyes are quick to dart in every direction , trying to follow
every new spark that promises to lead us to meaning! This is cause
for so much sorrow ... we must look to Jesus Christ, the Word and
our life, “the
same yesterday, today, and forever”!
4 In him Who is the Truth we will
find all truth.
There is a great need for a rediscovery of our true spiritual poverty,
that which empties out all the excesses and is prepared to wait
on God in love and simplicity and to see where Gods Spirit will
lead it, and not where it may choose to go itself!
We are in truth , blind ...
Pray to Mary, the mirror of Christ, to lead us into the depths of
the truth of her Son.
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1 Until every possible truthful statement concerning the lamp in its entirety is exhausted, then our apprehension of the total truth of its being is deficient. Only when it ceases to exist can we arrive at the possibility of acquiring the total truth concerning it. For example, it is true that there is a lamp on my desk. But this truth does not exhaust every truth that can or will ever be predicated of it. It is also true of the lamp that it was my sister's before it was mine. Equally true of the lamp is that it was bought at such and such store, and that its parts were assembled in such and such country and was fabricated from ores from another country, and that, moreover, in light of a failure in its circuitry it caused a fire in my sister's study which prompted a response from the local fire department during which a firefighter was injured and brought to a hospital where he acquired an infection that required an antibiotic from a pharmaceutical firm in Zurich which obtained the ingredients from a rare plant grown only in Africa ... ad infinitum. That the entire truth of the lamp — that is to say, everything truthful than can possibly be predicated of it — also involves Africa is something we do not ordinarily anticipate in our stating that we grasp the entire truth of the lamp sitting on my desk.2 Saint Matthew 7.2
3 Ecclesiastes 1.10
4 Hebrews 13.8
5 Saint Matthew 25.14-30
Your Little Sister in Christ
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II.
Sister’s Commentary:
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“What,
therefore, have we to do with questions of philosophy? He
to whom the Eternal Word speaks is free from theorizing.
For from this Word are all things and of Him all things
speak — the Beginning Who also speaks to us. Without this
Word no man understands or judges aright. He to whom it
becomes everything, who traces all things to it and who
sees all things in it, may ease his heart and remain at
peace with God. |
Teaching
is, or should be, the acceptance of a God-given charisma. It is
a vocation from God given for the common good and the up building
of others.
The writer of the Imitation is not saying that learning is to be
despised! No! Rather, it is to be channeled and used for the good
of others. Only when misused, when knowledge is sought purely for
self indulgence or self-promotion, does it fall outside the province
of Grace.
In an interesting
note, St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest philosophers and thinkers,
one of the brightest men of all time — whose writings fill vast
volumes — upon a mystical experience of Jesus Christ, returned from
his cell saying that "all that I have written is as so much straw”
before the immediate encounter with God Himself. His learning, his
great treatises, his knowledge ... was "as nothing" before the unspeakable
reality of God.
Is knowledge, then, to be despised? Not at all. But it must be placed
in proper perspective.
“Knowledge” is inseparable from “the Good” — although not all knowledge
is good.
Quite a paradox, yes? What we mean by this is that our familiarity,
our acquaintance with, everything that is good, necessarily implies
our knowledge of it — that is to say, our knowledge of the good
which we apprehend, and our apprehension of the good which we can
then say that we know. How can we be said to possess the good that
is, say, modesty, without knowing what modesty is? If we cannot
distinguish between modesty and immodesty, how can we be said to
know either — which is knowing the difference,
and making a distinction between which is good and
which is not good?
Not only is this the knowledge of what is good, but it is “good
knowledge”. Remember, we said that not all knowledge is good. To
know what is holy, good and pleasing to God is why you are reading
this very article, Little One, yes? Learning of such things and
coming to know them is to our everlasting good, and we never regret
what we have learned, what we have come to know. Indeed, much of
it is necessary to us for our eternal salvation. We must “know”
what is pleasing to God and what it is that the He wills for us.
And this is always, always beneficial to us, in this life, and in
the life to come. No possible harm, no evil whatever, can come from
this knowledge. In this sense, it is “good knowledge”. It benefits
us. It is necessary to us.
But not so “all knowledge”. This was, after all, the blandishment
from the evil one who led our First Parents, Adam and Eve, to the
Original, or first, Sin.
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“And he commanded him, saying: Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat: But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat. For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death.” 1 “Now the serpent was more subtle than any of the beasts of the earth which the Lord God made. And he said to the woman: Why hath God commanded you, that you should not eat of every tree of paradise? And the woman answered him, saying: Of the fruit of the trees that are in paradise we do eat: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of paradise, God hath commanded us that we should not eat; and that we should not touch it, lest perhaps we die. And the serpent said to the woman: No, you shall not die the death. For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil.” 2 |
As Adam and Eve tragically
discovered, through an act of disobedience, not “all knowledge”
is good. Consider the narrative a moment: Adam and Eve chose to
know good AND EVIL. How can they have “known” evil
without “experiencing” evil? Can we “know” the color purple without
experiencing it? I cannot, for I am color blind. I
have never seen purple. However much you “describe” it to me, I
can never “experience” it. Only upon “experiencing” the color purple
will I “know” it. The same can be said of anything whatever. This
is a benign example. Let us look at it more deeply. How am I to
“know” “pain” or “suffering” unless I “experience” it? Describe
it to me as you will, if I had never known either, I would have
no understanding — no “knowledge” — of what you were talking about.
Only in experiencing it in my mind, my soul, my body, would I understand
the words that you were using, and could be said to “know” that
of which you speak.
This is too important to pass by lightly. We cannot stress this
enough! Do you think "all knowledge” beneficial? Is "to know" the
highest good? In our world of inflated "intellectuals”, we would
answer, “yes”.
But that is because
knowledge is not Wisdom, although we often confuse the two. Tell
me ... how will you benefit from “knowing” — through “experiencing”
— the stench of rotting flesh? Is this not “knowledge”? What of
coming to experience and really “know” the procedure of an abortion
— seeing, witnessing helplessly, the violent struggle of a child
in its mother’s womb as it is systematically dismembered by a “physician”?
This would be acquiring knowledge, yes? But like Adam and Eve we
discover the reality to be quite different: we would that we had
never experienced either. Such “knowledge, far from benefiting us,
haunts us, fills us with either horror or revulsion, plagues our
dreams and dogs our lives. How we would that we had never “experienced”
and come to “know” either! This type of “bad knowledge”, as it were,
is the evil result of so much: the distortion of the beauty of human
sexuality through pornography whose degrading images are burned
in passion into the minds and memories of our children, the teaching
and promotion in our schools of homosexuality as “a legitimate and
alternative life style” to the youngest students however it robs
them of their innocence, the addiction of our children to drugs
in order to “know” narcotic states of mind.
Clearly, “knowledge” is not, as the great Fathers of the Church
put it, the “summum bonum,” the “highest good.” Each of us
in some way, indeed, in many ways, can attest to this.
Especially in light of St. Thomas Aquinas’s own experience noted
above, it is more than a merely interesting point of observation
— and a beautiful indication of God’s justice — that, through the
ages, many, many simple hearts have ultimately arrived at the same
understanding and grasp of truth as those who have studied books
and had the advantages of learning. These simple hearts, unable
through any fault of their own, perhaps through the lack of opportunities
or aptitude, have in fact received infused knowledge, that utterly
clear and absolutely intuitive knowledge, (apart from any study)
that is a gift of the Holy Ghost. If it is Gods truth we are seeking,
all will arrive at the same end, for Gods message and truth are
the same for all.
This is not
to say that we are free from reading, studying, and learning from
the WORD of God surely and Divinely revealed in Sacred Scripture
— the Holy Bible — to the contrary, we must be immersed in its guidance,
instruction, correction and challenge, for it is, under the guidance
of the Church, the Bride of Christ, the sure path to holiness, and
thus to happiness and fulfillment.
Taken from the above text, let us together utter this beautiful
prayer.
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“O God, You Who are the truth, make me one with You in love everlasting. I am often wearied by the many things I hear and read, but in You is all that I long for. Let the learned be still, let all creatures be silent before You; You alone speak to me.” |
Simplicity of heart enables us to focus on “the one thing necessary”, as Mary, the sister of Martha had chosen wisely. 3 May it please God to make us this wise ... as well as “innocent as doves” 4
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1
Genesis 2.16- 17
2
Genesis 3.1-5
3
Saint Luke 10.42
4
St. Matthew 10.16
Your Little Sister in Christ
Printable PDF Version of Sister's Commentary, Chapter 3
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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”
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