Spirit of the World: Day Seven

Image by Denis Doukhan from Pixabay

Day seven at Fish Eaters.

Day seven at The Catholic Company.

Chapter 18 of Book I of the Imitation of Christ is continued from yesterday. The fervor of the saints of old are compared to the laxity of our times.

The saints:

To themselves they seemed as nothing, and they were despised by the world, but in the eyes of God they were precious and beloved. They lived in true humility and simple obedience; they walked in charity and patience, making progress daily on the pathway of spiritual life and obtaining great favor with God. 

The lax: "Today, he who is not a transgressor and who can bear patiently the duties which he has taken upon himself is considered great."

Much later, centuries after the publication of the Imitation of Christ, Soren Kierkegaard in Diapsalmata writes of the bourgeois moral attitude which seems typical even today:

Let others complain that the times are wicked. I complain that they are paltry; for they are without passion. The thoughts of men are thin and frail like lace, and they themselves are feeble like girl lace-makers. The thoughts of their hearts are too puny to be sinful. For a worm it might conceivably be regarded a sin to harbor thoughts such as theirs, not for a man who is formed in the image of God. Their lusts are staid and sluggish, their passions sleepy; they do their duty, these sordid minds, but permit themselves, as did the Jews, to trim the coins just the least little bit, thinking that if our Lord keep tab of them ever so carefully one might yet safely venture to fool him a bit. Fye upon them! It is therefore my soul ever returns to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. There at least one feels that one is dealing with men and women; there one hates and loves, there one murders one's enemy and curses his issue through all generations—there one sins.

This seems Kierkegaard's way of expressing Revelation 3:16, "because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth."

The world beckons us to nod off, but let us remember the zeal of the saints who were alive in Christ.