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Original Title: De Imitatione Christi
ISBN: 0375700188 (ISBN13: 9780375700187)
Edition Language: English
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The Imitation of Christ Paperback | Pages: 288 pages
Rating: 4.2 | 18223 Users | 808 Reviews

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‘You can get used to anything,’ chuckled a retired SS captain in a documentary recently about his posting to Auschwitz, after he’d described how the bodies in the gas chambers always formed a perfect pyramid, with its apex at the grille in the roof. We might take issue with this particular instance of ‘anything’, but the fact remains that human beings are amazingly adaptable when it comes to pushing the psychological boundaries. The initial shock of a new and unpleasant experience fairly quickly levels out to a plateau that becomes the new norm. What we today accept as normal, everyday life would have seemed a vision of hell to a man of the Middle Ages: technology run riot; workers enslaved to capitalism; sex, money and power the presiding deities; religion apparently the preserve of the ignorant, the superficial and the deceived. The airwaves are creaking like an over-laden galleon under the weight of advice on everything from cosmetic surgery and nutrition to beauty therapies and relationships. I watched a woman on TV last night having liposuction and extensive, invasive surgery to make her feel happier with her body. The lump of flesh on the operating table, drenched in blood and with two huge wings of fat and skin laid out on either side, made her look like the aftermath of a Viking Blood Eagle execution, or the subject of a tortured painting by Francis Bacon. It seemed a perfect symbol for the way in which we have lost our way in the materialistic jungle, and certainly if I were Satan I’d be celebrating down the pub – mankind has been successfully hoodwinked, flooded and distracted with gadgets, obsessed with youth, beauty, money and sex, all thoughts of salvation gone out the window. The purity of the original message from any of the great religions seems to get contaminated as soon as it enters the corrupt medium of the world, so that what we end up with is an idea of the ‘Will of God’ - if it exists at all – as one that is wholly bent on evil, as Umberto Eco suggests in ‘The Name of the Rose’. There is a need for a return, for a restoration of the spiritual balance without which life is a burden and a struggle, a minimalist drama by Beckett rather than a glorious opera by Mozart. Society will go marching on its self-destructive way, but as individuals we can look out for ourselves and try to rectify the psychic disorders by purifying ourselves of the rubbish that is constantly seeking to make inroads. Thomas à Kempis’s wonderful book is more relevant today than when it was written. You don’t have to be a Christian or even particularly religious to derive nourishment from it. It hasn’t been out of print for six hundred years, and is worth more than a library of modern ‘self-help’ books. The Imitation consists of four books on general spiritual topics, each divided into subsections dealing with more focused aspects: ‘On trust in God in all trouble’, ‘On knowing ourselves’, etc. After the Bible itself, no other work can compare with its profound wisdom, clarity of thought, and converting power. Christians of such widely differing period and outlook as Thomas More and General Gordon, Ignatius Loyola and John Wesley, Francis Xavier and Dr Johnson are but a few of the thousands who have acknowledged their debt to this work. Although à Kempis spent most of his life in the cloister, his burning faith and love of God speak to us on the level of shared humanity. As F.R.Cruise says in his authoritative work on a Kempis, ‘Beyond doubt, the Imitation most perfectly reflects the light which Jesus Christ brought down from heaven to earth, and truthfully portrays the highest Christian philosophy.’

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Title:The Imitation of Christ
Author:Thomas à Kempis
Book Format:Paperback
Book Edition:Special Edition
Pages:Pages: 288 pages
Published:March 24th 1998 by Vintage (first published 1427)
Categories:Religion. Christian. Christianity. Theology. Classics. Nonfiction. Spirituality

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Ratings: 4.2 From 18223 Users | 808 Reviews

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For someone who goes so far wrong sometimes (and he really does), when a Kempis gets things right, he hits the nail dead on the head. There were definitely things that I didn't agree with in this book, but the main, overarching themes -- the supreme importance of God, dying to self, not attaching oneself to earthly things, not pursuing knowledge for knowledge's sake -- are absolute, incontrovertible truth. These ideas can certainly be wrongly applied, and he did definitely stray too far in the

I read this back in 2006. Although I don't agree with much of the theology presented by a Kempis, I found the book beautiful and moving. The man loved God and he pours out his heart on the pages. He also writes what he believes Jesus tells him in response. The book brought tears to my eyes a few times.

I picked up The Imitation of Christ after seeing that Eugene Peterson recommended it (though I'm no fan of The Message). I had no idea it has had such an enormous impact on the Church for centuries. A Kempis wrote this in the early 1400s!I was in this book for 10 months--August 08-June 09--so I'm afraid I lost a lot of my sense of the totality of the book. I read The Imitation as my devotions until January; then, I picked up Oswald Chambers and this one took a back seat. All this to say, I don't

Somehow I am cheered that this is one of the best-selling Christian devotional books in history, though I imagine it has fallen down the list in recent years. Not that market penetration has anything to do with the reality of devotional life, but this is a serious work that calls the believer to a life of intense and disciplined following after Jesus. Taken from the Catholic monastic-like setting of the Brethren of the Common Life in the early 15th century it does feel medieval and Catholic at

The Imitation of Christ consists of four books. One each on: 1.) Good advice on the life of Christian faith; 2.) The interior life of the follower of Christ; 3.) Spiritual comfort; and 4.) Reflections on the Eucharist. Each of these is further subdivided into anywhere from twelve to fifty-six mini-reflections on related topics. The third and longest bookthe one on spiritual comfortis my personal favorite. Even though its been over forty years since the first time I read Imitation I vividly

This is my go-to daily read I've carried around for the last few years, and it never gets old. When I need a good kick in the butt, I read Kempis. His excerpts are short but pack so much truth, and I can't tell you how many times I've just cried over his words as God has used this book to convict me of my self-exaltation and pride, and how the mercy of God meets us in our repentant and contrite hearts.

This is one of those books that one can pick up and put down again and again.Written for monks, it is a challenge for the striving Christian who is very much 'in the world' in a way these monks were not.Still, there is valuable advice for those seeking to go deeper in the their Christian faith.