The imitation of Christ
Thomas a Kempis
In a quiet copyist's room in the Low Countries, sometime around 1420, a monk named Thomas bends over a small book he is writing by hand. He belongs to the Brothers of the Common Life, a movement that has turned deliberately away from the noise of the age. Out in the universities, theologians are fighting over fine distinctions, splitting the faith into ever finer abstractions, building towers of argument. Thomas is doing the opposite. He is writing for ordinary people, about ordinary devotion, a guide to the interior life and the daily, humble following of Jesus. The devotio moderna, the new devotion, has decided that the renewal the church needs is not more cleverness but a closer walk. And so this monk distills it into pages that counsel the reader to stop climbing into lofty ideas and instead to stoop low, to take the yoke of a gentle and lowly Christ and learn from Him, to do as He did. The little book he is copying out will outlast nearly everything written in his century and outsell almost every book but the Bible. Reorientation, it turns out, is found less by mastering concepts than by imitating a Person.
“Take my yoke on you, and learn from me, for I am humble and lowly in heart; and you will find rest for your souls.”
— Jesus — Matthew 11:29 (WEB)
“I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”
Reorientation is tempted to mistake sophistication for renewal, to think the way back is upward into cleverness. The phase asks for something humbler and deeper. Here it means finding the new bearings not by mastering ideas about Christ but by following the gentle and lowly Christ closely, taking His yoke and doing as He did, in the small and daily things.
Your rebuilt faith can grow clever and stay unchanged, a fine collection of ideas you never quite obey. The new devotion calls you down from that, into the daily, humble imitation of Jesus. Stop measuring your recovery by what you can explain, and start following Him in the small things, the unseen kindness, the swallowed retort, the basin and the towel taken up when no one is watching. He left you an example on purpose, that you should do as He did, and the doing is where the knowing finally becomes yours. Take His yoke; it is the lowly, near walk, not the clever one, where the rest you have been missing actually lives.
You will follow your way into it, one ordinary obedience at a time. When you are rebuilding, the pull is toward the impressive: bigger ideas, advanced teaching, a faith sophisticated enough to answer every objection. It feels like progress. Thomas and the new devotion point the other way entirely, not up into clever heights but down into the small, daily imitation of a gentle and lowly Christ. This is humbling, because it means your recovered faith is measured less by what you can now explain than by whether you are actually following Him in the ordinary things, the unseen obedience of a Tuesday.
There is a particular vanity in mistaking a well-furnished mind for a changed life, and reorientation can stall there for years, collecting concepts and never stooping to the yoke. But the rest He promised is not in the mastery. Take His yoke, learn from His lowly heart, do the next humble thing He asks, and you will find what no amount of cleverness ever delivered: rest for your soul. The new bearing you are looking for is not an idea to grasp but a Person to follow closely, near enough to learn His gentleness.
Whenever the Church reorients, it is tempted to mistake intellectual sophistication for renewal while its life stays cold. The medieval movement of inward devotion, in figures like Thomas a Kempis, recovered what the schoolmen kept overlooking: the whole Body is formed by the daily imitation of Christ, not by winning arguments. Across its history the Church has found its renewals not upward into cleverness but downward into the gentle and lowly Jesus, taking His yoke in ordinary obedience. That humble, imitative following has given the Body of Christ, before a watching world, a depth that all its learning, by itself, could never produce.
Schools of thought rise and are argued down; the clever towers come apart and are cleared away. What cannot be shaken is the gentle and lowly Christ Himself, and a life bent low to follow Him. The arguments date and fall; the yoke remains, and the rest it gives outlasts every idea built over it.
- Am I measuring my rebuilt faith by what I can explain rather than by whether I am actually following Jesus?
- Where am I reaching for the impressive when Christ is asking me to stoop into something small and humble?
- What would it look like, this week, to take His yoke and simply do as He did?
Lord Jesus, gentle and lowly, I have wanted an impressive faith more than a following one. Forgive me. Bring me down to the small, daily way of imitating You, and put Your yoke on my shoulders. Teach me Your humble heart, and let me find in following close the rest I could not think my way into. Amen.