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← The Imitation of Christ/Book 3 · On Inward Consolation
Chapter 27Imit.3.27

Quod privatus amor a summo bono maxime retardat.

The Call to Total Surrender

Christ calls the soul to complete self-gift, warning that self-love and disordered attachment enslave, and lamenting the disciple’s failure to trust Him wholly.

Son, you must give the whole of yourself for the whole, and keep nothing of yourself for yourself. Know that love of yourself harms you more than anything in this world. According to the love and affection you carry, any given thing clings to you more or less. If your love is pure and simple and well ordered, you'll be free from captivity to things. Don't crave what you're not permitted to have; don't hold on to what can hinder you and rob you of your interior freedom. It's remarkable that you don't entrust yourself to me from the bottom of your heart, along with everything you could desire or possess.1

Futility of Self-Driven Seeking

The disciple is rebuked for anxious striving after personal advantage, which only deepens unrest and exposes one to constant opposition.

Why are you consumed with empty grief? Why do you wear yourself out with needless worries? Stand ready to do what pleases me, and you won't suffer any loss. If you chase after this or that, and want to be here or there for your own advantage and to suit your own preferences, you'll never find rest, and you won't be free from anxiety. In every situation some shortcoming will turn up, and in every place someone will oppose you.

Root-and-Branch Renunciation

True freedom requires not merely external renunciation but interior detachment from wealth, honor, and praise—all fleeting—and recognition that lasting peace comes only from standing firm in Christ.

So it doesn't help to have gained any particular thing, or to have piled up more and more outwardly, but rather to have despised it and cut it away from the heart, root and branch. And he should understand this not only in terms of money and wealth, but also in terms of the pursuit of honor and the desire for empty praise — all of which pass away with the world. A place offers little protection if the spirit of fervor is lacking, and the peace you sought from outside won't last long if it's missing the true foundation of an ordered heart — that is, unless you have stood firm in me, you can change yourself, but you can't make yourself better.✦ For once an opportunity arises and is taken, you'll find what you were running from — and then some.

Vanity Under the Sun

A prayerful meditation on Ecclesiastes’ wisdom: all things under the sun are vanity and affliction of spirit; true insight lies in seeing oneself and all creation as passing away.

Strengthen me, God, through the grace of the Holy Spirit. Give me the strength to be fortified in my inner self, and clear my heart of every useless anxiety and distress. Keep it from being pulled by various desires toward anything worthless or precious — but help me to see all things as passing away, and myself as passing away along with them, because nothing under the sun endures, because everything is vanity and affliction of spirit.✦✦23 How wise is the one who considers things this way!

Wisdom to Persevere

The chapter closes with a dual petition: for heavenly wisdom to love God above all, and for prudence and patience to resist flattery and opposition on the spiritual path.

Give me, Lord, heavenly wisdom, so that I may learn to seek you above all things, and to find you, to know and love you above all else, and to understand everything else according to the order of your wisdom, just as it truly is.45 Give me the prudence to wisely avoid the one who flatters me, and the patience to bear with the one who opposes me — for this is great wisdom: not to be shaken by every wind of words, nor to lend a willing ear to the flatterer. For this is how the path, once begun, is safely continued.✦6789

Read the original Latin

Fili, oportet te dare totum pro toto, et nihil tui ipsius esse. Scito quod amor tui ipsius magis nocet tibi, quam aliqua res hujus mundi. Secundum amorem et affectum quem geris quælibet res plus vel minus adhæret. Si fuerit amor tuus purus et simplex et bene ordinatus, eris sine captivitate rerum. Noli concupiscere quod non licet habere; noli habere quod te potest impedire et libertate interiori privare. Mirum quod non ex toto fundo cordis te ipsum mihi committis cum omnibus quæ desiderare potes, vel habere.

Quare vano mærore consumeris? cur superfluis curis fatigaris? Sta ad beneplacitum meum, et nullum patieris detrimentum. Si quæris hoc vel illud, et volueris esse ibi vel ibi propter tuum commodum et proprium beneplacitum magis habendum, nunquam eris in quietudine, nec liber a sollicitudine, quia in omni re reperietur aliquis defectus, et in omni loco erit qui adversetur.

Juvat ergo non quælibet res adepta, vel multiplicata exterius, sed potius contemta et decisa ex corde radicitus. Quod non tantum de censu æris, et divitiarum intelligat, sed de honoris etiam ambitu ac vanæ laudationis desiderio, quæ omnia transeunt cum mundo. Munit parum locus, si deest spiritus fervoris; nec diu stabit pax illa quæsita forinsecus, si vacat a vero fundamento status cordis: hoc est, nisi steteris in me, permutare te potes, sed non meliorare. Nam occasione orta et accepta invenies quod fugisti et amplius.

Confirma me, Deus, per gratiam Sancti Spiritus; da mihi virtutem corroborari in interiori homine, et cor meum ab omni inutili sollicitudine et angore evacuare, nec variis desideriis trahi cujuscumque rei vilis, aut prætiosæ: sed omnia inspicere sicut transeuntia, et me pariter cum illis transiturum, quia nihil permanens sub sole, quia omnia vanitas et afflictio spiritus. O, quam sapiens qui ita considerat.

Da mihi, Domine, cælestem sapientiam, ut discam te super omnia quærere, et invenire, super omnia sapere et diligere, et cætera secundum ordinem sapientiæ tuæ, prout sunt, intelligere. Da prudenter declinare blandientem et patienter ferre adversantem, quia hæc magna sapientia, omni vento non moveri verborum, nec aurem male blandienti præbere: sic enim incepta pergitur via secure.

Scripture echoes

  1. ↩John.15.4 — Remain in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it remains in the vine, neither can you, unless you remain in me.
  2. ↩Eccl.1.14 — I have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.
  3. ↩Eccl.1.4-Eccl.1.11 — A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. Eccl.1.5 — The sun rises and the sun sets, and to its place it hurries, where it rises again. Eccl.1.6 — It moves toward the south and turns toward the north; round and round the wind goes, circling endlessly, and on its circuits the wind returns. Eccl.1.7 — All the streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full; to the place where the streams flow, there they return to flow again. Eccl.1.8 — All things are wearisome; no one is able to speak of them. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing. Eccl.1.9 — What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun. Eccl.1.10 — Is there a thing of which someone might say, "Look, this is new"? It has already been, in the ages that were before us. Eccl.1.11 — There is no remembrance of the former things, and even of the latter things that will come, there will be no remembrance among those who come after.
  4. ↩Eph.4.14 — so that we are no longer children, tossed by waves and carried about by every wind of teaching in the trickery of men, in craftiness with a view to the error

Notes

  1. 1 ↩The conjunction cum is ambiguous — it could be temporal ('while'), causal ('since'), or concessive ('even though'). The concessive reading ('even though you can desire or possess all things, you still don't entrust yourself to me') best fits the rhetorical force of mirum and the chapter's theme of disordered self-love.
  2. 2 ↩The closing phrase 'omnia vanitas et afflictio spiritus' echoes Ecclesiastes 1:14 (Vulgate). The 'nihil permanens sub sole' clause likewise echoes Ecclesiastes 1:4–11.
  3. 3 ↩Corroborari rendered 'to be fortified' to capture the strengthening sense in the interior person; 'inner self' chosen for interiori homine to keep the devotional register without archaism.
  4. 4 ↩sapientiam rendered as 'wisdom' (sapientia); cælestem as 'heavenly' to preserve the divine origin of the wisdom requested.
  5. 5 ↩ut introduces a purpose clause governing all five infinitives (discam, quærere, invenire, sapere, diligere, intelligere); rendered as 'so that I may learn' to capture the chain of purpose.
  6. 6 ↩blandientem/adversantem are substantivized present participles rendered as 'the one who flatters' / 'the one who opposes' for natural English.
  7. 7 ↩quia introduces a causal clause explaining why prudence and patience are needed; rendered as 'for' to preserve explanatory force.
  8. 8 ↩enim is postpositive and explanatory, reinforcing the preceding statement about how the way is securely continued; rendered as 'for' after a colon.
  9. 9 ↩omni vento non moveri verborum ('not to be moved by every wind of words') echoes Eph 4:14 but is not a direct quotation; flagged as candidate allusion.