Thinking about tonight’s readings, I was immediately drawn to these words from the first verse of our New Testament reading – be imitators of God. The Authorized Version invites us more modestly to be ‘followers of God’, but the New English Bible reads as follows:
In a word, as God’s dear children, try to be like him
No mention of imitation as such, but we are invited to take Christ as our parental role model, which amounts to much the same thing. There is less variation when it comes to the next phrase, which suggests how we should set about it: live in love as Christ loved us. Another tall order – and plenty there to ponder on..
But I was drawn back to that word ‘imitate’ because I have had on my bookshelves for many years two copies of the little manual entitled ‘The Imitation of Christ’ by Thomas a Kempis. I think this one, bound in soft red leather, may have belonged to my father’s mother, who died in 1934. Since it came into my hands some twenty years ago, I have picked it off the shelf from time to time, and idly turned the pages. But I had never really engaged with it, so I thought perhaps I should try to do so now. The preface to the 1911 edition advises me that it is (or was then) the only work which has been published in so many different editions – about 3,000 at that time – that it required the whole of a large volume to itself in the catalogue of the British Museum. Alongside the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, many of our grandparents would have kept this little volume, even if they had no other books to nourish their faith. Although its popularity has waned over the past century, it is alleged that John Paul 1, regarded by some as a dangerously liberal thinker, was reading it at the time of his unexpected and perhaps mysterious death only 33 days after he was elected Pope in 1978. Be that as it may, it remains one of the great classics of devotional literature.
Born around 1380, Thomas a Kempis – Thomas von Kempen in something nearer the vernacular – grew up and was educated within the quasi-monastic communities established at about that time by Gerhard Groote within the little towns of the Ijssel valley in the eastern Netherlands. These communities, known as the Brethren of the Common Life, differed from the great monastic orders in three important respects. First, there was no sharp distinction between clergy and laity, who lived together in the same house, following the same way of life. Second, they supported themselves by ordinary secular employment, together with the pooling of such private income as they might have. Third, and most importantly, they took no vows and were bound by no formal Rule. Although their way of life was similar to that of the Augustinian friars, they were adamant in their rejection of any formal Rule. Indeed, when their freedom from such a discipline was challenged, they defended it with great vigour as
‘the singular glory of the Christian religion … Let us therefore not bring upon ourselves at once the destruction of our good name, our peace, our quiet, our concord and our charity. Our voluntary life as brethren is very different from the irrevocable necessity of those who live under the rule and statutes of a religious Order. Their monasteries fall into decay through the presence of unstable and undisciplined members: think then how much more our life would be destroyed by the enforced presence of such people.’[1]
Open to challenge as it has always been from those who are more comfortable relying on an externally imposed order and discipline, the absence of any formal Rule is an attractive feature of the Brethren of the Common Life, not least to those of us who have been brought up in the more liberal intellectual climate of later centuries. Their refusal to cut themselves off from the secular world is also attractive to those of us who have no choice about living in the world as it is, and would share their conviction – radical as it then was – that we are called to do so. Such a way of life, protected neither by monastic walls, nor by a monastic Rule, was of course open to abuse. Certainly it was always going to be suspect, then as now, in the eyes of a conservative Church hierarchy. The dangerous freedom that the Brethren of the Common Life espoused, and so vigorously defended, may explain why neither Gerhard Groote, nor Thomas a Kempis, has ever been raised to the status of a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. Nor was their freedom confined to the absence of formal structures to ensure order and discipline. The most characteristic devotional activity of the brethren was the private study of the Scriptures, and the writing down of the thoughts which came to them as they engaged prayerfully in this activity.
One is bound to acknowledge the risks associated with such liberty. A frivolous example might be Thomas’ views on the subject of church music. If you cannot sing like the nightingale and the lark, he said, then sing like the crows and the frogs, which sing as God meant them to.[2] Before the choir rise from their stalls to drag me from the pulpit, let me assure them – and you – that when the Trustees of the Church Music Trust meet tonight after evensong, I shan’t be citing Thomas a Kempis in support of the appointment of crows and frogs to our choir.
Speaking to us as he does from a distance of more than 500 years, there is plenty more that one might question. I believe Thomas would be humble enough to accept that he might be wrong in some things – even for his own time, and a fortiori for ours. But he would expect us to exercise a similar humility in asserting our opinions.
Be not therefore exalted in thine own mind for any art or science which thou knowest, but rather let the knowledge given thee make thee more humble and cautious. If thou thinkest that thou understandest and knowest much, know also that there be many things more which thou knowest not.[3]
Had Donald Rumsfeld been reading Thomas a Kempis?
Thomas may have been dismissive of too much scholarship, and humble about his own learning, but we owe his best loved book, The Imitation of Christ, to the disciplined habit which the members of this self-consciously undisciplined non-Order cultivated of writing down the thoughts which came to them as they meditated on the Scriptures, and more particularly on the life of Christ.
Thomas lived to be over 90, and his book, first published in 1486 some 15 years after his death, bears the stamp of life-long devotion. The book takes its name from its first chapter: Of the Imitation of Christ, and Contempt of all the Vanities of the World. The very first paragraph directs us to meditate on the life of Christ if we are to imitate him. The next, concerning the teaching of Christ, is typically practical in its emphasis: ‘whosoever would fully and feelingly understand the words of Christ, must endeavour to conform his life wholly to the life of Christ’. He goes on to dismiss cleverness and bookish learning … I had rather feel compunction than understand the definition thereof …before echoing the wisdom of Ecclesiastes in his dismissal of such vanities as the pursuit of wealth, preferment or honours, sensual pleasures or long life: ‘The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing (Eccl 1.8). Endeavour therefore to withdraw thy heart from the love of visible things, and to turn thyself to the invisible.’[4]
There is much here that resonates with Paul’s advice to the Ephesians. Paul too admonishes us to live as children of light (v9) and to live in love, as Christ loved us (v2). What could be more fundamental to the imitation of Christ, or closer to Thomas’ injunction to endeavour to conform [our lives] wholly to the life of Christ. But I think I’ve cited enough from the first chapter alone to demonstrate that any more than a few pages at a time is seriously indigestible. It seems to me that the value of the book lies almost as much in the process as it does in the product. Those of us who may be looking for something to take up for Lent, rather than something to give up, could do a lot worse than resolve to spend, say, fifteen minutes each day reading a passage from the New Testament, and writing down our own thoughts, seeking to apply what we have learned about the life or teaching of Christ to the conduct of our own life. As Thomas says: ‘The doctrine of Christ exceedeth all the doctrines of holy men (including Thomas himself); and he that hath the Spirit will find therein the hidden manna.’[5]
[1] Rector of Hildesheim, 1490, cited in R W Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages, Pelican History of the Church, 1970, p 344.
[2] Cited in J Huizinga, The Waning of the Miiddle Ages, Penguin Books, 1965, p 248 (first published 1924).
[3] Imitation of Christ, chapter II.3
[4] Imitation of Christ, chapter I.3
[5] Imitation of Christ, chapter I.2