Challoner’s Reflection on The Imitation of Christ¹
BOOK THREE: INTERNAL CONSULTATION
CHAPTER X.: To Despise the World and Serve God is Sweet

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The world is so enslaved by the passions, that it can understand nothing of the felicity of the children of God. Sometimes it pities them as the world knows how to pity, casting on them a look of contempt; sometimes it contemplates them with a kind of stupid astonishment. It has no idea of what takes place in the soul united to its Creator; no idea of the consolations and of the delicious calm which it enjoys. Saint Paul crying out: I exceedingly abound with joy in all our tribulation (2 Corinthians, 7:4), is an inexplicable mystery to it; it will never be able to conceive that pure joy, which is justice and peace in the Holy Ghost (Romans 14:17). What then is the lot of the worldly man ? an immense discontent scattered over with a few pleasures; and, when God does not entirely abandon him, remorse. Search into his heart, and that is all you will find. Remorse is his justice, and discontent his peace.

ASPIRATION.

Grant me thy grace, O my God, and if my affections, my desires, my love, and my fidelity, can never be worthy of Thee, may they all at least be devoted to thy service. Amen.

Challoner’s Reflection on The Imitation of Christ¹
BOOK THREE: INTERNAL CONSULTATION
CHAPTER IX.: All Things should be Referred to God as their Last End

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All that is good flows from God, who is the supreme good, and all that He does is good, because He draws it from himself. There is not in the world any real evil but sin; for the punishment of sin is not an evil, because, supported with patience, it expiates it, and because it always re-establishes the order which sin had disturbed. Thus we hold from God life, intelligence, love, which should ascend again perpetually towards their source; and of ourselves we can do nothing, not even say: My Father! (Romans 8:15). For we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the spirit himself asketh for us with unspeakable groanings (Romans 8:26). The only thing which belongs to us is sin; it is the fruit of our free will, and its wages is Death (Romans 6:23).

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Challoner’s Reflection on The Imitation of Christ¹
BOOK THREE: INTERNAL CONSULTATION
CHAPTER VIII.: Self-Abasement in the Sight of God

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God shows Himself, in the Scriptures, full of immense compassion for faults purely human, if it may be so expressed; but he is without pity for pride, the beginning of all sin (Ecclesiastes x. 15); for pride, which is the special crime of the rebellious angel, and which directly attacks the Sovereign Being. He has said: I, the Lord, this is my name; I will not give my glory to another (Isaias, x. 15). Now all pride tends, in its essence, to make itself equal to God, to make itself God: a disorder than which a greater one cannot alone be conceived, but which we would hesitate to believe possible, if it were not continually before our eyes, and if we did not feel the germs of it in ourselves. Therefore see how God blasts it; first by that irony which freezes the soul with a supernatural terror: Behold Adam is become as one of us (Genesis 3:22); Adam cast naked, with his sin, on accursed earth! Adam, who had just heard these words: Thou shall die the death (Genesis 2:17)! Then read in the Gospel the fearful maledictions pronounced on the proud Pharisees, whilst he who humbles himself is at once justified. A woman weeps at the feet of Jesus; she humiliates herself on account of her sins; she scarcely ventures to ask pardon for them; her silence alone supplicates. The Saviour moved by her tears, consoles her, and many sins are forgiven her because she hath loved much (Luke, 7:47).

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Challoner’s Reflection on The Imitation of Christ¹
BOOK THREE: INTERNAL CONSULTATION
CHAPTER VII.: Grace Must Be Hidden Under the Mantle of Humility

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To recognise one’s misery and never to lose sight of it; to abandon one’s self into the hands of God, with a lively faith and an obedient love; this is the entire spiritual life, of which humility is the foundation. He who says to himself in the bottom of his soul: I am nothing but weakness and poverty, relies in no way on himself and places his entire hope in Jesus. He follows with simplicity the movements of grace, does not rise into fervour, does not sink into dryness; always satisfied, provided that the divine will is accomplished in him. Pride, which often hides itself under the veil of that which is most holy, does not seduce him by the vain desire of a state apparently more perfect, to which he is not called. Faithful and tranquil in his own path, he says to God: Give me wisdom, that sitleth by thy throne, and cast me not off from among thy children: for I am thy servant and the son of thy handmaid, a weak man, and of short time, and falling short of the understanding of judgment and laws (Wisdom 9:4, 5).

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Challoner’s Reflection on The Imitation of Christ¹
BOOK THREE: INTERNAL CONSULTATION
CHAPTER VI.: The Proving of a True Lover

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Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 7:21). It is by works that real love is known. Always prompt to obey, he never grows weary, never becomes discouraged. In sorrow and in joy, in consolation and in suffering, he praises, he blesses equally Him who strikes and who halts (Deuteronomy 32:39), according to the divine precepts, impenetrable to creatures. If temptations come to prove him, he combats, he resists with peace, because he does not rely on his own strength, and expects victory only through assistance from on high. If he sometimes yields, he at once rises up again without trouble, humiliated, but not conquered. His repentance, although deep, is calm, because it is free from the irritation of pride. His faults afflict him and do not surprise him. He knows his weakness and he grieves on account of it, full of confidence in the grace which will sustain him, if he is faithful to it. Detached from the earth and from its vanities, which are called goods, what does he wish for? What God wishes: he has no other will, no other desire.

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Challoner’s Reflection on The Imitation of Christ¹
BOOK THREE: INTERNAL CONSULTATION
CHAPTER V.: The Wonderful Effect of Divine Love

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God is charity: and he that abideth in charily, aUdethin God, and God in him (1 John, 4:16). But charity has its times of proof as well as its times of enjoyment; and this entire life should be only a continual exercise of charity, or the consummation of a great sacrifice, of which an eternal life and an unchangeable love shall be the reward. All the attributes of charity, given in detail by St. Paul, bring to our minds the idea of sacrifice; and the infinite love itself could only manifest itself fully to us by an infinite sacrifice. God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son (John, 3:16); and our love for God can only be properly shown by a sacrifice; not indeed by an equal one, for that would be impossible, but by a similar one, by the gift of our entire being, or by the perfect obedience of our souls, of our hearts, and of our senses, to the will of Him who has loved us so much.

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Challoner’s Reflection on The Imitation of Christ¹
BOOK THREE: INTERNAL CONSULTATION
CHAPTER IV.: We Must Walk Before God in Humility and Truth

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I am the Almighty God: walk before me and be perfect (Genesis x7:1). Thus the Lord spoke to the rather of believers, and this commandment addresses itself with still greater force to Christians, who have contemplated, in the Son of Man, the model of all perfection. It is said also to them: Be you perfect as also your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew v. 48). Wonderful precept; which, raising our fallen nature, teaches us what ransomed man is, what the Christian is in the eyes of God. But how can we, weak creatures bent to the earth by the burdens of the flesh, approach to that sovereign perfection, to which we are ordered to advance without ceasing? Listen to Jesus Christ: I am the way, and the truth, and the life (John, 14:6). He is the way which leads to God, the truth which is God Himself. He is the life promised to those that walk in truth, who do the truth, according to the words of the Apostle. Therefore all is in Jesus Christ and through Jesus Christ. United to his, our thoughts, our affections, our actions, become divine, and as the perfection of the Son is the very perfection of the Father, by our union with the Son, which commences on earth and will be consummated in heaven, we become perfect, as the Father is perfect.

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Challoner’s Reflection on The Imitation of Christ¹
BOOK THREE: INTERNAL CONSULTATION
CHAPTER III.: Listen Humbly to the Words of God. Many Do Not Heed Them

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There is nothing more rare than a sincere desire for salvation; and that is what should make us tremble, for the lot of each of us will be what we shall have made it: God aids us; He comes by his grace to the assistance of free will, but He does not force it. Now, what do we see? What spectacle does the world offer to us? We do not speak here of the impious man resolved to lose himself, and already marked with the stamp of reprobation: we speak of those who call themselves and believe themselves to be the disciples of Jesus Christ. In theory, Christians wish to save themselves; but they wish at the same time, they wish above all, to possess the goods and to taste the pleasures of the earth. They will give to God, in passing, some compulsory PRAYER.s; they will make themselves acquainted with His law in order to know what it strictly commands • then, tranquil on that point, they will go off in pursuit of the honours, of the riches, of the pleasures, which they call legitimate, or they will sleep in a life of sloth, permitted in their opinion, because it apparently does not violate any formal precept. But in all that, where is the faith which should rule all our actions with a view to eternity? Where is the love perpetually occupied with its object, the love greedy for sacrifices? Where is penitence? Where is the cross? And this, O God! is desiring our salvation! Is it not written that whosoever shall seek to save his life, shall lose it? (Luke, x7:33). Let each one judge himself on these words, before the terrible day when the Lord Himself will judge him.

Challoner’s Reflection on The Imitation of Christ¹
BOOK THREE: INTERNAL CONSULTATION
CHAPTER II.: Truth Speaks Inwardly Without the Sound of Words

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There is a voice which speaks to us interiorly and as if in the depths of our souls, when closing our ears to the noise of creatures, we wish to listen to God alone, and call Him to us with all the ardour of our desires. It was this voice which far from men, ravished the Pauls, the Antonys, the Pacomes, in the desert, and revealed to them in their obscurity the secrets of Divine Wisdom: It is this voice which instructs the saints, inflames them- consoles them, and inebriates them, so to speak, with its celestial sweetness. Moses and the prophets were covered with a veil for the disciples of Emmaus: Jesus comes, and the shadows which obscure their intelligence are dissipated ) something unknown is stirred up within them, so that they said one to the other: Was not our heart burning within us, whilst He spoke in the way, and opened to us the Scriptures? (Luke, xxiv., 32′. And we, poor unfortunates whom the tumult of the world still distracts, what shall we do? Do we not wish also to listen to Jesus? Let us hasten to summon to us the divine guide, and let us say with our whole soul: Lord, stay with us, because it is towards evening, and the day is now far spent (Luke, 24:29).

PRUYER.

O my God, I beseech Thee to supply my deficiencies, by speaking to me, by enlightening my mind, by touching my heart, by granting me the grace to hear thy divine word; to relish, to love, and to put it in practice, that so it may not draw down on me a more severe condemnation, but may become to me a word of eternal life. Amen.

Challoner’s Reflection on The Imitation of Christ¹
BOOK THREE: INTERNAL CONSULTATION
CHAPTER I.: The Inward Conversation of Christ with the Faithful Soul

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Let us listen to the Divine Wisdom: My delight U to he with the children of men (Proverbs, 8:31). Rut the greater part of mankind, not understanding this language, or fearing to understand it, withdraw from Him to take delight in the company of creatures. He was in the world and the world knew him not (John, i. 10). This is why the Apostle cautions us against loving the world or the things which are in the world. If we wish, then, to draw to ourselves the spirit of God, to which the unction teacheth all things (i John, 2:27), let us separate ourselves from the world; let us renounce its maxims, its pleasures, its tumultous societies. Jesus is only found in the desert; neither shall any man hear His voice in the streets (Matthew, x2:19); but when He has resolved to pour out His favours on the faithful soul, He leads her unto the wilderness, and there He speaks to her heart (Osee, 2:14). How can the delights of this celestial conversation be described? Those who have tasted the pleasure of it once can no longer bear the conversations of men:

ASPIRATION.

O Jesus! speak to my heart; henceforth I wish to hear thy voice alone, amid the silence of all creatures.