Feast day: March 30
St. John Climacus
A monk and abbot of Mount Sinai whose book 'The Ladder of Divine Ascent' maps the spiritual life as a thirty-rung ladder and remains a classic of Eastern monasticism.
John Climacus was a monk of Mount Sinai in the sixth and early seventh centuries, who entered the monastery there as a youth of about sixteen and, after the death of his spiritual master, withdrew to live for some forty years as a hermit in the surrounding desert. Late in life he was persuaded to become abbot of the great monastery of Sinai.
His surname, 'Climacus,' comes from the Greek word for ladder, and from the book that made him famous: 'The Ladder of Divine Ascent.' Written at the request of a neighbouring abbot, it lays out the spiritual life as a ladder of thirty rungs — one for each year of Christ's hidden life — by which the soul climbs from the renunciation of vice to the summit of love.
Shrewd, humane, and unsparingly honest about the temptations and self-deceptions of the spiritual life, the Ladder became one of the most influential works of Eastern Christian spirituality, read aloud in Orthodox monasteries every Lent to this day.
John died about 649. His feast is kept on 30 March, and in the Byzantine Churches the fourth Sunday of Lent is dedicated to his memory — a lasting tribute to the monk who mapped the long ascent to God.
His surname 'Climacus' means 'of the ladder,' after the book that has shaped Eastern Christian spirituality for fourteen centuries.
Image: Unknown (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/08457a.htm
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