AN
INTRODUCTION TO ST. JOHN CLIMACUS
AND
THE
LADDER OF DIVINE ASCENT
(Taken
from the Introduction to The Ladder of Divine Ascent, pp. 1-70)
I.
Who is John? (See handout with short biography by Daniel of Raithu)
A. Monk: born c. 579, died c. 649
1.
received the name Climacus (Klimax) which means "ladder" and
is taken from the title of his book The Ladder of Divine Ascent.
2.
origin hidden in obscurity; possibly a native of Palestine and may have been a
disciple of Gregory Nazianzen.
3.
at age 16 he joined the monks of Mount Sinai at the Monastery of St. Catherine,
which was built by the Emperor Justinian in 556. For four years lived under the direction of a holy man
called Martyrius, to whom he submitted himself in obedience
B. Holy Man:
1.
tonsured as a monk at age 20 and settled as a hermit at Tholas about five miles
from the main monastery. There he
lived for the next forty years advancing along the way of perfection.
2.
He received the grace of continual prayer and the gift of tears. He disciplined himself vigorously,
fasting and reducing sleep to a minimum, but always displayed prudent
moderation. Known for his
holiness; many came to see him for advice. He had an extraordinary grace of healing the spiritual
disorders of souls - freeing them from their struggles not only through his
spiritual counsel but through his prayer on their behalf.
3.
He read the bible assiduously, as well as the Fathers and was considered to be
one of the most learned desert monks.
It is for this reason that he is often called John the Scholastic.
C. Spiritual Father:
1.
after 40 years of hermit life at Tholas, John was elected abbot of the central
monastery at Sinai. It was during
this last period of his life that he composed The Ladder of Divine Ascent,
at the request of abbot John, the superior of a nearby monastery at Raithu. (See
handout with Letter of Abba John, Abbot of Raithu)
2.
he came to be regarded as another Moses; for, as his biographer writes,
"he went up into the mountain of contemplation, talked to God face to
face, and then came down to his fellows bearing the tables of God's law, his Ladder
of Divine Ascent - Ladder of Perfection."
II.
What is The Ladder?
A. Purpose:
1.
written for monks, specifically those living in community. Yet, the monk's purpose is essentially
the same as all Christians: to live according to the gospel. Whether monastic or married, all the
baptized are responding to the same Gospel call; the outward conditions of
their response may vary, but the path is essentially one.
2.
written to be a practical guide (as a guide for those who intend to
exercise their faith) - John's aim in The Ladder is not to inculcate
abstract teaching or to impose a formal code of ascetic rules, but to evoke in
his readers an experience similar to his own.
"Do
you imagine that plain words can . . . describe the love of God. . . and
assurance of the heart? Do you
imagine that talk of such matters will mean anything to someone who has never
experienced them? If you think so,
then you will be like a man who with words and examples tries to convey the
sweetness of honey to people who have never tasted it. He talks uselessly." (Step 25)
3.
The Ladder is an invitation to pilgrimage. Refrains from giving detailed
directions about specific practices, because his concern is with inner
disposition rather than external behaviors. The practice of physical asceticism is assumed, but not
overly emphasized. What matters to
John is humility and purity of heart.
"In
scripture are the words, "I humbled myself, and the Lord hastened to
rescue me" (Ps. 144:6); and these words are there instead of "I have
fasted," "I have kept vigil," "I lay down on the bare
earth." (Step 25)
4.
What John offers is not techniques and formulae but a way of life, not
regulations but a path of initiation. His aim is to impart a living, personal experience. And so, like our Lord with His
parables, John avoids spelling out his conclusions too plainly, for he wants the
reader to work out the answer for himself. The point of his examples are not always immediately clear
and his phrases are often cryptic. He loves short, sharp sentences, pithy
definitions, and paradoxical aphorisms. In all of this John's aim is pastoral:
to wake the reader up, to elicit a response, to provoke a leap of faith, to
bring him to the moment of personal encounter.
B. Structure and Emphases:
1.
book structured around the image of a ladder stretching from earth to heaven
like that which Jacob saw (Gen 28:12).
Though commonly used by earlier writers, John's is far more
developed. His ladder has thirty
rungs or steps, one for each year in the hidden life of Christ before his
baptism.
I.
The Break with the World
1.
Renunciation
2.
Detachment
3.
Exile
II.
The Practice of the Virtues ("Active Life")
(i)
Fundamental Virtues
4.
Obedience
5.
Penitence
6.
Remembrance of Death
7.
Sorrow
(ii)
The Struggle Against the Passions
(a)
Passions That Are Predominantly Non-Physical
8.
Anger
9.
Malice
10.
Slander
11.
Talkativeness
12.
Falsehood
13.
Despondency
(b)
Physical and Material Passions
14.
Gluttony
15.
Lust
16-17.
Avarice
(c)
Non-Physical Passions (cont.)
18-20.
Insensitivity
21.
Fear
22.
Vainglory
23.
Pride (also Blasphemy)
(iii)
Higher Virtues of the "Active Life"
24.
Simplicity
25.
Humility
26.
Discernment
III.
Union with God (Transitions to the "Contemplative Life")
27.
Stillness
28.
Prayer
29.
Dispassion
30.
Love
2.
Internal Structure of Individual Steps:
a.
Brief introductory statement, indicating the source of the vice and its place
in the Ladder;
b.
Short Definitions;
c.
More detailed analysis: causes, symptoms, effects, remedies (with illustrative
anecdotes);
d.
Final Summary.
3.
Correspondences and Contrasts:
a.
I (1-3) balances III (27-30)
b.
II i (4-7) balances II iii (24-26)
c.
II ii b (14-17) on passions of a material type, is flanked by two balancing sections,
each of six steps - II ii a (8-13) and II ii c (18-23) - on passions of a less
physical character
4.
Type and Anti-Type:
a.
A theme adumbrated in the earlier part of the work is often taken up again at a
higher level in a second part.
b.Step
2 (detachment):Step
29 (dispassion)
Step 4 (obedience):Step
26 (discernment)
Step 5 (penitence): Step
25 (humility)
Step 13 (despondency): Step
18 (insensitivity)
5.
Progression from Human Effort to Divine Gift:
a.
God's grace is absolutely indispensable and human effort essential for attaining any virtue, however humble.
Yet, on the earlier rungs we are chiefly conscious of our own toil and
struggle, while on the higher rungs we are more and more aware of the freely
granted grace of God.
b.
What begins as painful warfare ends as spontaneous joy.
"At
the beginning of our religious life, we cultivate the virtues, and we do so
with toil and difficulty.
Progressing a little, we then lose our sense of grief or retain very
little of it. But when our mortal
intelligence turns to zeal and is mastered by it, then we work with full joy,
determination, desire, and a holy flame." (Step 1)
6.
Emphasis upon Active Pursuit of Virtues and Struggle with Vices:
a.
the larger part of the work is concerned with the practice of the virtues and
the struggle against the vices; by comparison, the section on the contemplative
life (Steps 27-30) is relatively brief.
b.
John does not want his readers willfully and prematurely to seek after visions
and ecstacies, instead of learning penitence and humility. He is constantly warning us not to
attempt too much too soon; we cannot "climb the entire ladder in a single
stride." He insists that the
solitary life and the more advanced forms of prayer is only for the very few,
only for those who have been prepared through long years of training in the
practice of the virtues.
C. Teachings:
1.
Imitation of Christ, Spirituality and Dogma, Grace and Free Will:
a.
the aim throughout the ascent of the ladder is to follow Christ, to
become "like God", to imitate and resemble him in his divine love.
A
Christian is an imitator of Christ in thought, word and deed, as far as
this is humanly possible, and he believes rightly and blamelessly in the Holy
Trinity. (Step 1)
Love,
by its nature, is a resemblance to God, insofar as this is humanly
possible. (Step 30)
b.
spirituality and dogma are essentially connected; there can be no true
life of prayer without a right faith in God. For example, in Step 6 John writes:
"Christ
is frightened of dying but not terrified, thereby clearly revealing the
properties of His two natures."
If
Christ is truly man, then He has two wills as well as two natures; and it is
precisely at His agony in the garden that we see the presence of these two
wills most plainly manifested - in tension, yet in ultimate
reconciliation. Christ's fear of
death indicates that He has a genuinely human nature, and so a genuinely human
will, for He could not experience such fear in His divine nature or His divine
will. At the same time John makes
a further point by distinguishing fear of death from terror of death. It is, he says, natural for man, living
under the conditions of the fall, to fear death; terror of death, on the other
hand, comes from a sense of unrepented sins. Now Christ is not Himself a sinful man, but at His
Incarnation He accepts to live out His earthly life under the conditions of the
fall. He therefore accepts the fear
of death natural to fallen man; but, being Himself sinless, He does not
experience the sinful terror of death.
The
doctrinal point is vital for spirituality. Imitation of Christ, in a full and genuine sense, is only
possible because God has become completely man, taking upon Himself the
entirety of our human nature - including a human will - and so experiencing
from within all our moral conflicts, our fears and temptations, only without
sin. Because we see in Christ a
human will exactly like ours, yet freely obedient to the will of God, we know
that such free obedience is also possible for us.
c. the spiritual way involves the
convergence or synergy of two factors, unequal in value but both equally
necessary: divine grace and human freedom. What God does is incomparably more important. Yet our part is also essential, for God
does not save us against our will.
Anyone
trained in chastity should give himself no credit for any achievements. . . .
When nature is overcome it should be admitted that this is due to Him Who is
above nature. . . . The man who decides to struggle against his flesh and to
overcome it by his own efforts is fighting in vain. . . . Admit your incapacity
. . . . What have you got that you did not receive as a gift either from God or
as a result of the help and prayers of others?. . . It is sheer lunacy to imagine that one has deserved the
gifts of God. (from Steps 15 and 23)
2.
Joyful Sorrow:
a.
the imitation of Christ signifies sharing, at one and the same time, in His
death and in His resurrection.
b.
strong dualism in John's thought: between the unfallen and the fallen, between
the natural and the contranatural, between immortality and corruption, between
life and death.
c.
Everywhere John negates in order to affirm: Exile involves a painful sacrifice
- the loss of parents, friends, familiar surroundings - but the overriding
motive is creative, to make us free for God. "Exile is a separation from everything, in order that
one may hold on totally to God."
Obedience is "a total renunciation of our own life . . . death
freely accepted," but it is also a "resurrection." Repentance is not just death but life -
the renewal of our baptismal generation.
It is not despair but hope.
To repent is not only to fear God's wrath but to respond to His love:
the grief that accompanies penitence is the grief that comes from loving God.
d.
a basic optimism without denying reality of fall. For the penitent, Christian sorrow is constantly interwoven
with joy. Tears, like the
experience of repentance, spring from a sense not only of our sinfulness but of
God's mercy; there is gladness in them as well as grief.
e.
John sums up the point in the composite word of his own creating: charmolypi
- signifying "Joyful sorrow."
Spiritual mourning leads to spiritual laughter; it is a wedding garment,
not a funeral robe.
3.
My Helper and My Enemy: the Ambivalence of the Body - Eros, the Passions,
Apatheia
a.
the body is both adversary and friend: adversary in as much as it has been
marred by the fall, friend in as much as it remains God's creation and is
called to share in the resurrection glory. For the Christian the body is not a tomb or prison,
not a piece of clothing to be worn for a time and then cast aside, but an
integral part of the true self.
The Christian's aim is "a body made holy".
b.
The passions, although a consequence of the fall and therefore no true
part of human nature, are merely the distortion of the natural impulses
implanted by God. While
repudiating the passions, we should not reject the natural God-given impulses
that underlie them, but should restore to good use that which has become
misdirected as a result of the fall.
Our watchword should be "transfigure" not
"suppress"; "educate" not "eradicate". For example, physical eros is
not to be considered sinful, but can and should be used as a way of glorifying
God. Sin is evil, but not the body
and its natural impulses. In fact,
physical love can be a paradigm of our longing for God.
c.
Apatheia (dispassion) - it is not only a denial of the
passions, regarded as the contranatural expression of fallen sinfulness, but it
is also a reaffirmation of the pure and natural impulses of our soul and
body. It connotes not repression
but reorientation, not inhibition but freedom; having overcome the passions, we
are free to be our true selves, free to love others, free to love God. Dispassion is not mere mortification of
the passions but their replacement by a new and better energy. It is an "inaugurated eschatology"
- the resurrection of the soul prior to that of the body. To have dispassion is to have the
fullness of love.
4.
Obedience and the Spiritual Father:
a.
for one embracing the spiritual path, obedience is a fundamental virtue. Not simply obedience to a monastic
rule, but more personally obedience to Christ, and to the spiritual father as
the earthly icon of Christ, the Good Shepherd.
b.
John is emphatic about the importance of the spiritual father. The ascent of the ladder is not to be
undertaken in isolation, but under the immediate direction of a guide.
c.
guidance is received in one of two ways: i) by modeling oneself upon the
personal example which the spiritual father sets in daily life, or ii) through
the disclosure of thoughts, through opening one's heart to the spiritual
father. This may be a confession
not only of sins, but doubts, temptations or general thoughts.
d.
the spiritual father is a "healer": the confession of sins is
therapeutic rather than juridical.
Sin is disease; to go to confession is to enter the hospital and to
expose our wounds; the spiritual father is the doctor who makes us inwardly
whole by prescribing medicines, by bandaging, cauterizing, amputating.
e.
openness of heart is required: if this is lacking, if the disciple in
disclosing his thoughts deliberately conceals or misrepresents, the object of
confession is frustrated; the doctor cannot help if the patient lies about his
ailments.
f.
spiritual father provides a personal relationship within which the disciple can
grow, a relationship based on prayer.
A spiritual father intercedes for his disciples. He mediates between God and his
disciple, pleads on his behalf.
g.
spiritual father as anadochos - one who takes responsibility for his
disciples sins. Called to be a
living icon of the Good Shepherd, one who shows sacrificial love for those in
his care. He is a burden-bearer
par excellence. No higher calling
than this - he is one who brings repentant souls back to God.
5.
Prayer and Stillness - the Invocation of the Name:
a.
prayer seen by John as a dialogue and union with God.
b.
the primary end for which a human person is created
c.
the mirror that reflects where one stands with God.
d.
John is categorical about the value of simplicity. We are to avoid multiplicity in words. He favors the use of short simple
prayers whereby one can enclose his mind and thought.
e.
various possible formulae can be used: a verse from the psalms or different
scriptural texts.
f.
There is one type to which John attached particular importance: the invocation
or remembrance of the Name of Jesus, the Jesus Prayer.
It
is linked with the remembrance of death, making it a prayer of contrition and
penitence. John sees it as a
powerful weapon against demons and commends its use when on the threshold of
sleep. He also suggests a
particular bodily posture, with arms outstretched in the form of a cross. Mind, John tells us, conforms to the
body; our outward posture influences our inward state.
g.
such prayer leads to hesychia (stillness) - worshipping God unceasingly
and waiting on Him. The prayer
becomes all-embracing and continuous, linked with the rhythm of one's
breathing. The hesychast confines
within his body the powers of his soul, his thoughts, desires, imagination and
the rest; he is not dispersed, but concentrated upon a single point -
Christ. This inward prayer is not
so much an occasional occupation as it is a continuous state; it is not merely
one activity among others, but the activity of one's whole life.
The
hesychast is not someone who says prayers from time to time, but someone
who is prayer all the time.
His prayer becomes, in the true sense, prayer of the heart; the totality
of the human person dwelling in communion with God.
III.
Why Read The Ladder?
Why read the writings of a monk who lived fourteen hundred
years ago - a monk who was writing
specifically for fellow monastics?
What could such a person have to say to those living in such a different
age and world?
Well,
the monk in himself presents us with a deep challenge. For he is someone who, so it would
appear, has deliberately withdrawn from the usual patterns of living; one who
has given up all that the world offers.
His very life is a reminder that all things are passing: God alone and
His love endure. The monk's
existence confronts us with our own mortality and with what and who awaits us
when we pass from this world. All
that he does, the unrelaxed severity and discipline of his life, has God and
the desire for God as its motivation.
The monk, as a man of faith, longs for and seeks union and communion
with his Creator.
For
us as Christians, the path has already been marked out: Christ is the Way, the
sure road, into the actual living presence of the Creator. There remains, however, many obstacles
to be overcome and avoided. And
the greatest struggle lies not outside but within - our own lack of
integration. The battle is waged
within the human heart and with one's self and one's sin.
It
is for this reason that John's work is of such great value: as one who stripped
himself of all but the self and God, he is the best of all guides into the
inner realms of man; who knows from experience what the spiritual novice will
encounter, the dangers to be avoided, and the weapons to be used.
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