Spiritual Formation for Ministry

Spiritual Exemplar Project

Karina Loayza

THOMAS A KEMPIS (1380-1471)

A REMARKABLE UNWORTHY SERVANT
It seems to me that the crown of glory is given only to the one that makes of his love for the Master a
joyful lifework, and that the place of honor is for the one who is not eagerly looking for the honor itself
but instead eagerly looking for knowing more of Christ and loving Him only. This can be a well
description of the life of Thomas Kempis whose work is impregnated with a smell of an intimate
friendship with Christ. It looks like he is writing about someone he knows very well, they are more than
acquaintances and that he is calling others to enjoy this closeness for themselves. This reason is more than
enough to assert that we have much to learn from Thomas, if we really want to walk alongside with the
Master and not be slow of heart to believe and blind to see Him in all His glory.
Thomas spent nearly the whole of his life in the Monastery in Mount St Agnes, and most of his seventy
years there he knew nothing of Rome and Avignon with its corrupted popes, Constantinople fell and
Thomas stood quite in his little nook writing his treatise that by 1429 was just a little book of a limited
circulation written by a fairly anonymous Augustinian monk member of a small faith community in the
Netherlands1, however some years later it become one of the most translated and cherished works of
Christianity, after the Bible. Therefore, the question that naturally arises is: Why this apparently brief and
simple work written by a seemingly isolated monk has become such a great representative piece of
spirituality for all ages?
From a political point of view, The Imitatione would be considered irrelevant for the time it had appeared
since Thomas didnt confront directly the powers of evil as a Luther or a Calvin would do centuries later,
he didnt go to a Cathedral and nailed his treatise with a title: This is how you are supposed to live, you
all corrupted clergy!, he didnt point out the sins of his contemporary society that by that time knew
nothing about the contemplative life of which Thomas is the chief representative. On the contrary,
Thomas approached to overcome the pervasive evil was by infusing good, by pointing out to a more
sublime example in the primitive Christians, or in the church in Jerusalem as it is pictured in the Acts of
the apostles, and in Christ himself. In this way, Thomas led the people to elevate their sight from an
earthly reality to a heavenly and eternal perspective.
The life of Thomas is not part of the story of the martyrs, or using the illustration of Berth Elliot that
when comparing his own life to his brothers life he said: I was made for the plow, and my brother was
made for the altar2, referring to his living in the ordinary and to another that is like a short-lived shining
light. Likewise, Thomas was made for the plow, for being a remarkable unworthy servant that does only
what is his duty (Lk.17:10), and whose life of extraordinary devotion marked the pace for its own
generation and for the ones to come. Therefore, if we want to find the type of legacy Thomas left we need
to take the panoramic route, we need to stop by and to smell the flowers, more also we do need to learn to
contemplate the beauty of the ordinary for this is the kind of legacy Thomas left to us.
We certainly would affirm that the value of Thomas legacy is his life itself. His work is neither a deep
theological treatise nor an insightful philosophical handbook where you can go after the knowledge of
this world, for in his own words, it is certainly better the farmer who serves God than the proud

William Griffin. Thomas Kempis. The Imitation of Christ. How Jesus wants us to live: A contemporary version. Harper Collins.
New York, 2001.
2
Berth Elliot was a missionary in Ecuador for more than 50 years. His famous brother, Jim Elliot was killed by a tribe in the jungle of
the Ecuador at the age of 26.

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November 2nd, 2014

Spiritual Formation for Ministry

Spiritual Exemplar Project
Karina Loayza

Philosopher who entertains thoughts about heaven.3 His life is kind of a living invitation to just be still in
the presence of the Lord, and get our nourishment from our relationship with Him. While we are reading
the Imitatione we cant help but notice how close Thomas is from the Lord Jesus, you feel like youre
staring at an elderly couple that have learned to converse through their silence and to enjoy the presence
of the other, and you just want to have the same experience of intimacy that they have. This is the kind of
feeling that the reading of The Imitatione impressed in your soul, and we do need to be being awake
toward this feeling if we want to respond to Gods calling to be loved by Him.
In addition to that, we need to consider the life of Thomas as part of the life of a godly group of men of
singular devotion, the fellowship of the Brothers of the Common Life, with whom Thomas spent most
part of his life, and since he was the Chronicler of the community we can assert that his life is a reflection
of the pious society he lived in daily. 4 This group of godly anonymous men with Thomas as their
representative where at the heart of the pervasive mystic movement that built a solid ground for the
Reformation a century later, and whose spiritual sword was The Imitatione for we need to take into
consideration that the Bible was not available for the ordinary men and that its reading in vulgar tongue
was regarded as a forbidden thing worth of punish to the one who dares the authority of the established
church.
In conclusion, we have an audience in the 15th century with hunger for Divine truth, and the Imitatione
was its bread, an appetizer previous to the banquet that came with the first translation and extended
circulation of the Bible centuries after. For this original audience, the importance of Thomas work is that
it was born in a darkest hour, and it infused a spiritual fuel that ignited the movement of Reformation.
On the other hand, for a more contemporary audience the relevance of this work in the midst of an
always-in-a-hurry generation could not be more necessary, and vital. Our current generation is in the
prison of the urgent, there is no time to contemplate the beauty of the ordinary, and we dont like the
panoramic route anymore. In this scenario, I find very difficult for us to find in a walk with the Shepherd
of our souls an appealing, productive and remunerated activity. Therefore, the work of Thomas Kempis
for its inner simplicity remind us that we are made for an intimate friendship with our Lord Jesus, in the
words of Thomas: without friends no one can survive, and if Jesus isnt first among your friends, youll
be, if I may paraphrase John (6:68), an desolate duck.5

William Griffin. Thomas Kempis. The Imitation of Christ. How Jesus wants us to live: A contemporary version. pp. 5
Rev.S. Kettlewell. Thomas Kempis and the Brothers of the Common Life, Vol.I, Kegan Paul, Trench & CO. 1 Paternoster Square.
London, 1882.
5
William Griffin. Thomas Kempis. The Imitation of Christ. How Jesus wants us to live: A contemporary version. pp. 72.
4

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November 2nd, 2014