Ancient Anglican

In the later meditations, á Kempis shows us how someone who is in Christ responds to the hardship.  If our responses are different, then the problem doesn’t lie with the response itself, but in our relationship with Jesus.

We were created and commanded to love the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Deut. 6:5, Matt. 22:37. That love, however, can be bent either internally resulting in pride, anger, and envy, or bent externally towards the material world resulting in greed, gluttony, or lust. Therefore, á Kempis encourages us to keep our love of God alone. 

Jesus gives us for lessons for peace: Do another’s will, prefer less than more, seek the lower place, and ask God’s will be fulfilled in you.

For me, these meditations of á Kempis in leading us to imitate the meekness of the suffering servant raises the question of how do we confront injustice in the world. 

discernment is rooted in spiritual practice, yet it is not a step-by-step process. It requires, learning to listen for and recognize over time the voice and character of God in our hearts and daily lives. – Henri Nouwen

We want to be the best Christian we can be.  But, the example Christ gives us is to be humble, not to be the “best”.  In our union with Christ, we are not called to great moral progress or perfection but simply to appear before him with a broken and contrite heart. Ps. 51:17. 

Within these mediations á Kempis continues to caution us to not put our faith in holy things, religious practices, or spiritual feelings. Rather our faith and the object of our desire should be Christ alone.

Wandering is good when the mind wanders on God during the entire extent of his prayer, on God’s glory and majesty, stemming from a recollection of the Scriptures, from an understanding of the divine utterances and holy words of the Spirit.

The first step in this unification of the soul with Jesus is the cultivation of the ability to listen and to know his voice. Throughout the scriptures, we see that God speaks to us in our silence. 

The purpose of the parable isn’t to teach us that God will always welcome us home or to be a joyful rule follower.  Rather, the heart of the parable, and indeed the very heart of the Gospel, is to teach us what it means to become the Father. 

Salvation is not a change in location but a change in being. It is not about going to Heaven but becoming the Father in whose likeness we are to become.

Fr. Nouwen posits that the ultimate lesson of the parable, and indeed the core message of the Gospel, is that we are to become like the Father. We are called to imitate the compassionate God that is disclosed to us as the compassionate father in the parable.