Weekly General Audience February 11, 2009

Pope Benedict XVI began a new series of catecheses dedicated to the great Christian writers of the Middle Ages. His first teaching was devoted to St. John Climacus, who was born around 575 and spent most of his life on Mount Sinai.

St. John Climacus, the Holy Father noted, is best known for The Ladder of Divine Ascent, an outstanding treatise on a soul’s spiritual journey from renunciation of the world to perfection in love. The journey takes place over three stages: detachment from the world, spiritual battle against the forces of evil, and discernment of one’s deepest motivations that leads to tranquility of the soul in order to probe the depths of God’s mysteries.

Dear brothers and sisters,

After devoting 20 catecheses to the apostle Paul, today I would like to resume my presentation on the great writers of the Church of the East and West from the medieval era. I will speak about John Climacus — whose name comes from the Latin transliteration of the Greek word klimakos, which means “ladder” (klimax). This word is taken from the title of his principal work, in which he describes a soul’s lifelong ascent toward God.

John Climacus was born around the year 575, so he lived around the time when Byzantium, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, was experiencing the greatest crisis in its history.

Within a short period of time, the geographical layout of the empire had changed, and all of its structure began to crumble as the result of an onslaught of barbarian invasions. The only structure that remained was the Church, which continued to carry out its missionary, humanitarian, cultural and social work during those difficult times, mainly through a network of monasteries, in which great religious figures like John Climacus were able to work.

John Climacus lived and wrote about his spiritual experiences amid the mountains of Sinai, where Moses encountered God and Elijah heard his voice. Information about him has been preserved in a short work called Vita (pp 88, 596-608), which was written by a monk known as Daniel of Raithu.

At the age of 16, John became a monk on Mount Sinai and a disciple of the abbot Martyrius, an “elder” or “a wise man.” When he was about 20, John chose to live as a hermit in a cave at the foot of the mountain, in a place called Tola, about 8 kilometers from the present-day monastery of St. Catherine’s.

However, solitude did not prevent him from meeting people who wished to receive spiritual direction from him, nor from visiting other monasteries close to Alexandria. Indeed, his life as a hermit, far from being an escape from the world and from the realities of human life, was channeled into an ardent love for others (Vita 5) and for God (Vita 6).

After 40 years of life as a hermit loving God and loving his neighbor — years during which he wept, prayed and battled demons — he was appointed as abbot of the famous monastery on Mount Sinai, thus returning to life in community within a monastery.

A few years before he died, out of nostalgia for the life of a hermit, he passed on the leadership of the community to a brother who was a monk at that monastery. He died sometime after the year 650.

John’s life was divided between two mountains — Mount Sinai and Mount Tabor — and we can truly say that he radiated the light that Moses saw on Mount Sinai and that the three apostles contemplated on Mount Tabor.

As I pointed out earlier, he is famous for his work Scala (Klimax), which is known in the West as The Ladder of Divine Ascent (PG 88,632-1164).

Detachment From the World

Written at the insistence of the abbot of the monastery of Raithu near Sinai, it is a complete treatise on the spiritual life in which John describes the path of the monk, from the moment of his renunciation of the world until the moment of his perfection in love.

According to this book, the path consists of 30 steps, each of which leads to the next. This path can be summarized in three successive stages. The first consists of a rupture with the world in order to return to a state of “evangelical infancy” in which the essential point is not so much a break with the world but rather an adherence to everything that Jesus said — a true return to infancy in the spiritual sense, becoming like children.

According to John, “A good foundation is one formed by three bases and three pillars: innocence, fasting and chastity. All who are newly born in Christ (see 1 Corinthians 3:1) should begin with these things, following the example of those who physically are newborn babies” (1, 20; 636).

Voluntary detachment from persons and places that are dear to a monk allows the spirit to enter into deeper communion with God. This renunciation leads to obedience, which is the road to humility through humiliation — which will never be lacking — by one’s own brothers.

As John says, “Blessed are those who have mortified their own will to the utmost and have entrusted the care of their own selves to their masters in the Lord. Indeed, they will find themselves at the right hand of the crucified Lord!” (4, 37; 704).

Spiritual Warfare

The second stage of the path consists of spiritual warfare against the passions. Each step on the ladder is associated with a major passion, which he describes and diagnoses, followed by a prescribed therapy through its corresponding virtues. Without a doubt, these steps as a whole constitute the most important treatise that we possess on a strategy for the spiritual life.

However, the struggle with our passions is not merely negative. It also assumes some positive elements, thanks to the image of “fire” from the Holy Spirit: “All those who undertake this good fight (see 1 Timothy 6:12), a difficult and arduous one … know that they are casting themselves into the fire if they truly want the immaterial fire to dwell within them” (1, 18; 636).

This fire is the fire of the Holy Spirit, which is the fire of love and truth. Only the power of the Holy Spirit assures us of victory.

According to John Climacus, it is important to realize that the passions are not evil in themselves. They become evil when man uses them in the wrong way due to his freedom of choice.

If these passions are purified, they can open the path to God by virtue of the energy that emerges from the union of asceticism and grace. Moreover, “since virtues have received from the Creator an order and a beginning … the boundaries of virtue are endless” (26/2, 37; 1068).

Christian Perfection

The last stage of the path is Christian perfection, which is developed throughout the last seven steps of the ladder. These are the loftier stages of the spiritual life, which the esicasts are able to experience — those solitary souls that have achieved inner peace and tranquility.

Yet, these stages are accessible as well to very fervent monks.

Of the first three steps — simplicity, humility and discernment — John, in harmony with the Desert Fathers, considers the last one — the ability to discern — the most important. Every act should be submitted to a process of discernment. Indeed, everything depends on the motivating factors in the depth of a soul’s heart, which have to be examined.

Here, one enters into the very heart of the person in an effort to awaken in the hermit — in the Christian — a spiritual sensitivity and a “sense within the heart,” which are gifts from God. “As our guide and rule in everything, after God, we should follow our conscience” (26/1, 5; 1013). This is how a person achieves peace within the soul — esichia — thanks to which the soul can approach the depths of the divine mysteries.

This state of tranquility, of interior peace, prepares the esicast for prayer, of which there are two kinds, according to John: “corporeal prayer” and “prayer of the heart.”

The first is the prayer of those who need bodily gestures to help them in prayer: extending their hands, making moaning sounds, beating their breast, etc. (15, 26; 900). The second is a spontaneous prayer that is the result of an awakened spiritual sensitivity, a gift from God to those who are dedicated to corporeal prayer. John calls this the “Jesus Prayer” (Iesoû euché).

It consists of simply invoking the name of Jesus continuously — like breathing: “Memory of Jesus becomes one with your breath, and, thus, you will know the usefulness of esichia (interior peace)” (27/2, 26; 1112). Ultimately, prayer becomes very simple — simply the word “Jesus” that has become one with our every breath.

Faith, Hope and Charity

The last step on the ladder (30), tinged with the “sober intoxication of the Spirit,” is dedicated to the supreme “trinity of virtues” — faith, hope and, above all, charity. John also speaks of charity as éros (human love), a symbol of the soul’s nuptial bond with God.

Once again, he uses the image of fire to express the ardor, the light and the purification coming from God’s love. The power of human love can be reoriented towards God, just as a wild olive tree can be grafted to a good tree (see Romans 11:24).

John is convinced that an intense experience of this éros can help the soul make much more progress than a harsh struggle against the passions because its power is great. Along the journey, therefore, these positive elements prevail.

However, he also sees charity is closely related to hope: “The power of charity is hope, thanks to which we await a reward for charity. … Hope is the gateway to charity. …The absence of hope destroys charity: Our efforts are linked to hope; our suffering is sustained by hope, and thanks to hope, we are surrounded by God’s mercy” (30, 16; 1157).

The conclusion of The Ladder of Divine Ascent contains a synthesis of this work in words that the author attributes to God himself: “May this ladder teach you the spiritual disposition for virtue! I am at the top of this ladder, as my great pupil, St. Paul, says: ‘So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:13)’” (30, 18; 1160).

Lessons for Us Today

Some last questions are raised at this point: Does this work, written by a hermit and a monk who lived 1,400 years ago, still have something to say to us today? Can the life’s journey of a man who lived his whole life on Mount Sinai in the distant past have any relevance for us today?

At first glance, it might seem that the answer is No, because John Climacus is too remote from us today. But if we look closer, we see that the monastic life is merely a good symbol for the baptismal life, for the life of a Christian. In a sense, it reveals in large letters what we write day after day in fine print.

It is a prophetic symbol that reveals what it means to live as a baptized person in communion with Christ, with his death and his resurrection. It is particularly important for me that the top of the “ladder” — the last steps — are at the same time those initial, fundamental and simple virtues of faith, hope and love. These virtues are not merely accessible to the heroes of moral tales; they are a gift from God for all baptized people. Our life grows in and with these virtues.

The beginning is also the end. The departure point is also the arrival point. The entire path leads to faith, hope and charity, which are a more radical and ever-growing reality.

The entire ascent is present in these virtues. Faith is of fundamental importance because this virtue implies that I give up my arrogance — my own thoughts — as well as any claim to judge for myself without recourse to others. This path to humility, towards spiritual infancy, is necessary. It requires us to overcome any arrogance, whereby we say, “I know better — in my own time, during this 21st century — than all those could have ever known at that time.”

Instead, we have to entrust ourselves only to sacred Scripture, in the word of the Lord, and, in humility, look toward the horizon of faith so as to enter the immensity of this universe, of God’s world. In this way, our spirit — the sensitivity of our hearts to God — will grow.

John Climacus rightly tells us that only hope can make us capable of living in charity — the hope with which we transcend everyday things, not expecting success during our days here on earth, but awaiting, in the end, the revelation of God himself.

It is only by expanding our spirit, by transcending ourselves, that our lives become great and that we are able to sustain the difficulties and the disappointments of daily life — and that we can be good to others without expecting a reward in return.

Only if there is God, that great hope to which I am drawn, can I take the little steps in my daily life that enable me to learn to love.

The mystery of prayer, of personal knowledge of Jesus — simple prayer that aims only to touch the heart of the divine Teacher — is hidden in charity. In this way, our own heart opens up and learns goodness directly from him — from his love.

Let us make use, then, of this “ladder” of faith, hope and charity. In this way, we can attain true life.

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