Who was Thomas à Kempis?

John Baiamonte, Ph.D.

Grace Memorial Parishioner, Vestry Member, and Christian Education Leader

In early November, 2000 it was barely a year since my life had crashed and burned.  I was smoldering and in deep pain.  I was searching around for help to put my life back together.  My soul was in deep pain, and I have no idea how I ended up in the bookstore of St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in Metairie on November 2, 2000.

You might ask how the hell do I know where I was on that exact day.  Well today, I was rummaging through my library, and I came across this extract of a book entitled The Imitation Christ by Thomas à Kempis.  Still stuck inside the book was the receipt that showed I had paid $.50 for the book.  It had been marked down from $2.95.

I don’t recall exactly why I bought the book except that it was being advertised as a spiritual classic.  At that point in my life, I felt a spiritual classic might help ease my pain.  I read in the preface that the “renowned medieval manual of devotion was “to exhort and instruct the Christian how to seek spiritual perfection by constantly following Christ Crucified as his example.”  The author of the preface stated that the book was “among the best loved devotional treatises of Western Christendom.”  So, I took it home to read.

Since I knew nothing about Kempis, I did some quick research about his book of which I only had an extract.  I found that Sir Thomas More said it was one of the three books everybody ought to own.  Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, read a chapter a day and regularly gave away copies as gifts.  John Wesley, founder of Methodism, said it was the best summary of the Christian life he had ever read.​

So, who was Thomas à Kempis?  He was born around 1380 and died on May 1, 1471.  He was a German-Dutch Catholic who joined the monastery of Mount St. Agnes at Zwolle in the Netherlands in 1406, and he later became a priest. Kempis spent most of his time in the monastery writing and copying manuscripts.  He was later named subprior of the monastery and charged with instructing novices.  In this capacity Kempis wrote four booklets between 1420 and 1427 that were later collected and named The Imitation of Christ.  ​

"Thomas von Kempen" 1460. Public Domain. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org

His booklets were prepared as sermons or reflections for the novices of the monastery.  In his first booklet he laid out the primary requirement for the spiritually serious: “We must imitate Christ’s life and his ways if we are to be truly enlightened and set free from the darkness of our own hearts. Let it be the most important thing we do, then, to reflect on the life of Jesus Christ.”  For Kempis the highest virtue is humility.  He argued that we must let go of the illusion of superiority.  “If you want to learn something that will really help you, learn to see yourself as God sees you and not as you see yourself in the distorted mirror of our own self-importance.”  He also wrote that “This is the greatest and most useful lesson we can learn:  to know ourselves for what we truly are, to admit freely our weaknesses and failings, and to hold a humble opinion of ourselves because of them.”  For Kempis, humility requires us to embrace the fact that we will face some suffering whether you want to or not.  He argued that “God wants us to learn to endure troubles without comfort.”  Kempis maintained that we must submit ourselves totally to God and to expect to become more humble through adversity.

His fourth treatise was “The Book on the Sacrament” in which he maintained that the Eucharist can help the faithful draw nearer to Christ.  Throughout all treatises he advised the novices not to indulge oneself and not to put oneself forward.  What he meant was that one should put our full trust in God.  

Kempis’s works and his life are venerated in Catholicism, Anglicanism, and Lutheranism.  His feast day is August 30.

​In closing, I would like to share some of Thomas à Kempis’s thoughts taken directly from the abstract of his four treatises:

Whosoever thou reposest in men, out of Jesus, is all no better than lost.

Thou shalt quickly be deceived, if thou look only to the outward appearance of men.
If Jesus be with thee, no enemy can hurt thee.

Dispose and order all things according to thy will and judgment; yet thou shalt ever find that of necessity thou must suffer somewhat, either willingly or against thy will, and so thou shalt ever find the Cross.

Where is thy faith?  Stand firmly and with perseverance; be patient and a man of courage; consolation will come to thee in due time.

I shall end this blog with my favorite line from Thomas à Kempis:

If I send thee affliction or any cross whatever, chafe not, nor let thy heart fail thee; I can quickly lift thee up again and turn every burden into joy.

Twenty-five years ago, this passage warmed my heart and still does today.
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The Imitation of Christ is available on Amazon.