Greco-Christian stream·The Imitation of Christ·Book I — Admonitions Profitable for the Spiritual Life·Chapter XII. Of The Uses Of Adversity
XII. The uses of adversity
On why occasional adversity is good for the soul. It humbles, it teaches, it brings us back to ourselves and to God. Bonum est nobis quod aliquando habeamus aliquas gravitates et contrarietates — it is good for us sometimes to have some heaviness and contradictions.
Source context
- Theme
- redemptive function of tribulation and suffering in the soul's purification toward God
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Stoic philosophy (Seneca, Epictetus)Adversity is understood as the gymnasium of the soul, strengthening virtue precisely because it strips away external comfort and compels inward reliance — a structural parallel to Kempis's insistence that tribulation profits more than consolation.
- Desert Fathers / Apophthegmata PatrumThe Fathers taught that temptation and hardship are necessary conditions for the monk's discernment of spirits and cannot be bypassed on the path toward apatheia.
- Kabbalah (Gevurah / Din)The sefirah of Gevurah represents divine severity as a redemptive structuring force; suffering under its action is understood as purificatory contraction preparing the soul to receive higher light — a cross-tradition congruence with Kempis's valuation of adversity.
Chapter XII. Of The Uses Of Adversity
OF THE USES OF ADVERSITY
It is good for us that we sometimes have sorrows and adversities, for they often make a man lay to heart that he is only a stranger and sojourner, and may not put his trust in any worldly thing. It is good that we sometimes endure contradictions, and are hardly and unfairly judged, when we do and mean what is good. For these things help us to be humble, and shield us from vain-glory. For then we seek the more earnestly the witness of God, when men speak evil of us falsely, and give us no credit for good.
2Therefore ought a man to rest wholly upon God, so that he needeth not seek much comfort at the hand of men. When a man who feareth God is afflicted or tried or oppressed with evil thoughts, then he seeth that God is the more necessary unto him, since without God he can do no good thing. Then he is heavy of heart, he groaneth, he crieth out for the very disquietness of his heart. Then he groweth weary of life, and would fain depart and be with Christ. By all this he is taught that in the world there can be no perfect security or fulness of peace.
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