Sunday of St. John Climacus (2021)
Heb 6:13-20/Mark 9:17-31
Being
the Sunday on which we remember Saint John Climacus, it seemed good for us to
spend a little time, not on ‘who’ he is, but rather on what he has left for us
and the Church as his legacy, his gift to us for our spiritual growth in
Christ.
His
great work, the Ladder of Divine Ascent, is read in every Orthodox monastery
each year during the Great Fast. For
those who have not visited a monastery, when meals are served, the abbot or
abbess of the monastery will select a monk or nun from the group who stands and
reads spiritually beneficial material while the group sits quietly and
eats. It is during this time that “The
Ladder” would be read.
I
brought an icon which is used on this day.
It depicts a group of monks all trying to climb from earth to heaven,
with Christ at the top, reaching out to accept those who complete the climb,
angels who are encouraging those on the ladder during their ascent, demons
flying about with arrows and hooks pulling the monks from the ladder, and
typically there is a dragon with wide open jaws at the bottom swallowing those
who fall. It is simultaneously an awe
inspiring and fearful image to contemplate, for it shows what we endure in our
lives as we also attempt to rise to that level to which our Lord calls us.
Although
we are given this image of a ladder, and to us that means moving from one level
to another after some struggle to climb, in fact the Ladder of Saint John is
more a set of parallel rungs. It’s not
so much that you ever completely rise above one of the elements of the
ladder. Rather, we are continually
trying to perfect our spirits in all of these areas.
The
“rungs” of the Ladder are comprised of virtues we need to labor to acquire, of faults
we need to labor to purge, and of characteristics we need to labor to
adopt. There are thirty such elements to
the ladder. Let’s take a look at them.
It
begins with three ‘rungs’ which are designed to force us to break our
connection with the world. Specifically,
they are “Renunciation,” “Detachment,” and “Exile”. Renunciation does not indicate us rejecting
the gift of life God has given us.
Rather, it means renouncing the world’s control over us. One typical encouragement from Saint John along these
lines includes this: “If you aspire to perfection, then do what
good you can. Speak evil of no one. Rob no one.
Tell no lie. Hate no one. Do not separate yourself from the
church. Show compassion to the
needy. Do not scandalize. Do not consider adulterous acts. If you do all this, you will not be far from
the kingdom of heaven.” Detachment
is an encouragement to divorce ourselves from the things of the world,
possessions, comfort. Saint John’s focus here is on our Lord’s
commandment to “let the dead bury their
own dead.” (Mat 8:22) He teaches
that if we remain attached to anything, we will suffer great griefs, for if we
lose that to which we remain attached, then suffering begins. Attach yourself to Christ, for He cannot be lost,
and then there can be no grief! Exile is
the carrying of this breaking of connection with the world to our own
hearts. Saint John describes exile as “a disciplined heart, unheralded wisdom, a
hidden life spent in unseen meditation, striving to be humble, wishing for
poverty, longing for the divine.”
After
breaking with the world, the next set of concerns moves to practicing the
virtues. This includes a group of
“fundamental virtues” – and bring us to the rungs, “Obedience,” “Penitence,”
“Remembrance of Death,” and “Mourning” or sorrow.
Acquiring
“Obedience” is easy to understand. But Saint John carries it to
places we may not immediately consider.
He teaches, “Obedience is a total
renunciation of our own life,” indicating that we are servants, and as
such, we belong to Him whom we serve. He
teaches, “A servant of the Lord stands
bodily before men, but mentally he is knocking at the gates of heaven with
prayer.” Saint John defines “Repentance” as “the renewal of baptism, a contract with God
for a fresh start in life.” And it
is through the “Remembrance of Death” that repentance is given life. Saint
John teaches, “As
thought comes before speech, so the remembrance of death and of sin comes
before weeping and mourning.” He
ends the chapter with these words: “Do not deceive yourself, foolish worker,
into thinking that one time can make up for another. The day is not long enough to allow you to
repay in full its debt to the Lord. Some
have said that you cannot pass a day devoutly unless you think of it as your
last.” On “Mourning” Saint John teaches, “It is a golden spur within a soul that has
been stripped of all bonds and ties, set by holy sorrow to keep watch over the
heart.” He tells us that true
mourning brings holy tears, and “If God
in His love for us had not given us tears, those being saved would be few
indeed and hard to find.”
After
highlighting these fundamental virtues, Saint
John moves to struggles against the passions. He begins with those which are not physical
in nature: “Anger”, “Malice”, “Slander”,
“Talkativeness,” “Falsehood,” and “Despondency.” He teaches that “the first step to freedom from anger is to keep the lips silent when
the heart is stirred, the thoughts silent when the soul is upset, and to remain
calm when unclean winds blow.” With
respect to conquering malice, he teaches, “Let
your malice and spite be turned against the devils. Treat your body as an enemy, for the flesh is
an ungrateful and treacherous friend.
The more you look after it, the more it hurts you.” He defines slander as “the child of hatred and the remembrance of wrongs.” To overcome this, he encourages us to “blame not the person who falls, but the
prompting demon. No one wants to sin
against God, even though we all do without being compelled.” He tells us that “Talkativeness is a doorway to slander,… a servant of lies, … the
darkening of prayer.” On falsehood
he tells us, “A baby does not know how to
lie, nor does a soul cleansed of evil.”
On despondency Saint John
teaches that “Virtues can be acquired to
overcome the passions. But despondency
is a kind of total death.”
From
these passions, Saint John moves to those which are tied to us physically,
“Gluttony,” “Lust”, “Avarice,” and “Poverty,” before he returns to the
non-physical passions of “Insensitivity,” “Fear,” “Vainglory (or vanity),” and
“Pride.”
Having
defined ways to overcome the passions, Saint
John moves to the virtues as he teaches us to
cultivate “Simplicity,” “Humility,” and “Discernment.” Finally, he brings us to a point of seeking
unity with God, moving us toward what the Church calls “the contemplative
life,” by teaching us to achieve “Stillness,” to remain in “Prayer,” to live in
“Dispassion,” and to manifest “Love.”
Thirty
of these “rungs” which lead to union with God.
And we’ve only offered Saint
John’s words almost in passing for the first half of
them, “glossing over” the final half by description only.
What’s
the point? The point for us is that
achieving our goal of becoming truly a disciple of Christ, of living up to the
name Christian, of truly being His servant is not something that happens
instantaneously and mystically when we receive baptism. Baptism and Chrismation are an “entry point”
into a life of effort, a life of struggle.
In Matthew 11, Jesus is rebuking the crowds following Him, asking them
what they thought they were going to Saint
John the Forerunner to witness. He says to them, “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven
suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.” These are difficult words for us to
understand, but the Fathers teach us that one meaning is that the kingdom of
heaven breaks into this world violently, through powerful miracles, and those
who are vigilant and filled with the Spirit aggressively take hold of it. Those who hear and love the Word of God “take
the kingdom by force” by exerting all effort to enter into the Kingdom while
they are here on earth. It is for this
purpose that martyrs shed their blood.
The kingdom of heaven does not belong to the lazy or the sleeping, but
to those who actively labor to achieve entry into it.
This
does not give the picture of a people who are gifted salvation, but rather a
people who are active participants in their own salvation. And if we are to labor and struggle to attain
the goal of entry to heaven, we need a plan.
One who builds a house and who starts by purchasing a hammer has made a
start, but unless there is a plan, showing how to cut the wood, how big to make
the openings for doors, where to lay the bricks of the foundation, how to secure the roof, the house so built is
doomed to fall.
Saint
John Climacus gives to us such a plan for our efforts to take the kingdom by
force. His words are often very
difficult as well, offering encouragement that the world would interpret as
offensive. It is not “the only” plan to
open the kingdom to us. But it remains a
wonderful encouragement to all who read his words to make that plan for
ourselves, and to labor to follow the plan.
And it remains a yearly encouragement for us to exert the spiritual
labor and effort we expend together here in the Great Fast. Remember the words we offered here on the
Sunday of Forgiveness. We are in this
Fast together. Our best and most
important goal is to be an encouragement to one another, carrying us as a
group, as a ‘family’ to the end of the Fast, so that we together may witness
the Lord’s Passion and Resurrection.
Through
the prayers of Saint John Climacus, may our Lord grant to us jointly the hearts
to exert such effort, and to have hearts which desire entry to His kingdom
above all else!
