De Imitatione Christi
PATH FOUR
Intimacy with Jesus Christ
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us.
EPHESIANS 5:1-2
Tired and lonely Francesco Bernardone climbed Mount La Verna to flee the crowds and draw close to God. He had come here before when the press of his responsibilities had grown too much and his sense of God’s presence had grown too small. Now he was back. Exhausted. Dispirited. Old. After spending much of his adult life pursuing a perfect expression of the life of Christ, his tired body was breaking down. The years of disciplined neglect had taken their toll.
And then it happened. In the midst of a forty-day retreat, the fiery presence of the living Christ overwhelmed him. Coming in the form of the six-winged seraph from Isaiah 6 and hanging on the cross, Christ presented himself directly. Francesco was never the same. His body changed physically. The stigmata marks left on his hands, feet and side were identical to those of Jesus. He seldom spoke of the experience, but those who were present witnessed to his transfigured state. These eyewitnesses would later recount this experience and tell how the external marks confirmed what they had known for a long time: that Francis was in word, thought and spirit a perfect imitation of Jesus Christ.
Francesco Bernardone is known today as St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226). His experience on Mount La Verna in 1223 is the famous story of the visitation by Christ. This dramatic miracle would shape Franciscan spirituality for the next three hundred years and would ignite universal interest in the imitation of Christ as the ultimate destiny of every Christian. This is the central issue of Christian spirituality: learning to become like Jesus.
De Imitatione Christi
From the time of Christ, Jesus’ followers have sought ways to imitate him. The New Testament is filled with examples of how experiences from Jesus’ life became the model for early Christians. And Paul emphasizes at the outset of the church how our life of prayer and our efforts to imitate Christ are part of a larger goal to become like him. The apostle John places a unique focus on Jesus as the enlightener of all life. Through both his Gospel and his epistles we see how our efforts to imitate Christ raise us to new levels of awareness and understanding. John helps us see how Christ connects us organically with God. As we seek to imitate Christ, we are literally joined to God through him.
Across the long expanse of Christian history and culture, the effort to imitate Christ has played a primary role in the cultivation of the highest ideals and understandings of the Christian life. Beginning in the fourth century, the virgines sacrae were consecrated to perpetual virginity as an expression of the imitation of Christ. Syriac Christians followed suit, initially understanding discipleship as a literal imitation of the poor, homeless, celibate Jesus. In Ireland, the Celtic Christians practiced a form of voluntary exile and deprivation known as “the green martyrdom,” traveling as itinerant ministers in faith and obedience just as Jesus had done. These are just a few of the examples that illustrate the way culturally conditioned efforts to imitate Christ have guided the church through the centuries.
At the rise of the thirteenth century, the church began to look again to Jesus. After the highly speculative love-mysticism of earlier centuries, medieval Christians renewed their focus on the person and work of Christ. Europe was beginning a significant cultural transformation, and the earliest vestiges of what would become the modern economy were under way. Major shifts were destabilizing society, and during this time the church looked to the figure of Jesus and a life of imitating him as a stabilizing force for all Christians.
During earlier centuries, the cloistered monk toiling in prayer had been the noblest expression of the Christian life. As the world changed, however, the image of the ideal Christian changed as well. In time this new approach became known as the devotio moderna, the new way, and it defined the goal of the Christian life as learning to live as Christ had lived. No longer were Christians called to a life of solitary prayer. Now they were to be in the world, preaching, praying and facing the same challenges Jesus had. Over the next four centuries this new understanding would gain ascendancy. By replacing the ideal of the cloistered life with the growing belief that we were to express in word, thought and spirit the very life and teachings of Jesus, this new approach recovered the essence of the New Testament message.