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The Imitation of Christ
Thomas à Kempis
The Seventeenth Chapter
MONASTIC LIFE
IF YOU wish peace and concord with others, you must learn to break your will in
many things. To live in monasteries or religious communities, to remain there
without complaint, and to persevere faithfully till death is no small matter.
Blessed indeed is he who there lives a good life and there ends his days in
happiness.
If you would persevere in seeking perfection, you must consider yourself a
pilgrim, an exile on earth. If you would become a religious, you must be content
to seem a fool for the sake of Christ. Habit and tonsure change a man but
little; it is the change of life, the complete mortification of passions that
endow a true religious.
He who seeks anything but God alone and the salvation of his soul will find only
trouble and grief, and he who does not try to become the least, the servant of
all, cannot remain at peace for long.
You have come to serve, not to rule. You must understand, too, that you have
been called to suffer and to work, not to idle and gossip away your time. Here
men are tried as gold in a furnace. Here no man can remain unless he desires
with all his heart to humble himself before God.
