The Imitation of Christ · Chapter
XXVII explained
The chapter warns that personal love and self-interest hinder the highest good, urging the disciple to give all for all, despise worldly desires, and seek inward liberty by cleaving to God alone.
What happens
The chapter warns that personal love and self-interest hinder the highest good, urging the disciple to give all for all, despise worldly desires, and seek inward liberty by cleaving to God alone. It includes a prayer for cleansing the heart and for heavenly wisdom to love God above all things.
Themes in this chapter
Contempt for the World
The chapter explicitly teaches despising money, riches, honor, and vain praise as things that pass away with the world.
Interior Life and Solitude
Emphasizes inward liberty, freeing the heart from fruitless cares, and abiding in God rather than seeking peace from external things.
Love of God Above All
The prayer asks for grace to seek, find, relish, and love God above all things, and to understand all else according to divine wisdom.
Characters to notice
- Jesus Christ
Addressed as 'My Son' in the opening exhortation, representing the divine teacher.
- The Disciple
The speaker in the prayer section, seeking strength and wisdom from God.
- God the Father
Invoked in the prayer as 'O God' and 'O Lord', the source of grace and heavenly wisdom.
Key passages
“My Son, thou must give all for all, and be nothing of thine own.”
You must surrender everything completely and claim nothing as your own.
Opening call to total self-abandonment.
“If thy love be pure, sincere, well-regulated, thou shalt not be in captivity to anything.”
If your love is pure and properly ordered, nothing will hold you captive.
The condition for true freedom.
“The place availeth little if the spirit of devotion is wanting; nor shall that peace stand long which is sought from abroad, if the state of thy heart is without the true foundation, that is, if it abide not in Me.”
A location matters little without devotion, and external peace will not last if your heart is not grounded in Me.
Warns against relying on external circumstances for peace.
“Give me, O Lord, heavenly wisdom, that I may learn to seek Thee above all things and to find Thee; to relish Thee above all things and to love Thee.”
Grant me divine wisdom so I may seek, find, delight in, and love You above everything else.
Central petition of the prayer for heavenly wisdom.