The Imitation of Christ · Chapter
Of the Example of the Holy Fathers explained
The chapter reflects on the exemplary lives of the holy fathers—saints, apostles, martyrs, and desert dwellers—who served God with extreme devotion, enduring hunger, cold, labor, and persecution.
What happens
The chapter reflects on the exemplary lives of the holy fathers—saints, apostles, martyrs, and desert dwellers—who served God with extreme devotion, enduring hunger, cold, labor, and persecution. Their poverty, humility, obedience, and constant prayer are contrasted with the coldness and negligence of the present time, urging the reader to be provoked to greater spiritual fervor.
Themes in this chapter
Contempt for the World
The holy fathers renounced all riches, dignities, and worldly ties, desiring nothing from the world and living as strangers to it.
Suffering and the Cross
The chapter highlights the grievous tribulations, persecutions, and self-denial endured by the saints in following Christ.
Characters to notice
- Jesus Christ
The holy fathers are described as walking in the footsteps of Christ.
- The Disciple
The narrator addresses the reader directly, lamenting the decline of devotion and urging imitation of the holy fathers.
Key passages
“They renounced all riches, dignities, honours, friends, kinsmen; they desired nothing from the world; they ate the bare necessaries of life; they were unwilling to minister to the body even in necessity.”
They gave up wealth, status, relationships, and worldly desires, eating only what was necessary and refusing to indulge the body even in basic needs.
This illustrates the theme of contempt for the world and extreme asceticism.
“O the coldness and negligence of our times, that we so quickly decline from the former love, and it is become a weariness to live, because of sloth and lukewarmness.”
How cold and careless we are today, quickly falling away from the devotion of earlier believers, so that life itself feels burdensome due to our laziness and lack of fervor.
The narrator laments the spiritual decline of the present age compared to the holy fathers.