St. John Climacus

From Daniel, Monk of Kaithu. his Cotemporary, and from, his own Writings.

JOHN, surnamed Ctimacus, from his celebrated book entitled Climax, or the scale or ladder of Christian and religious perfection, was born, as it is thought, in some part of Palestine, about the year 525. After an innoftcnt education at home in the exercises of Christian piety, joined with the study of the human sciences, when he had attained to the age of sixteen, he formed the happy resolution of quitting the world and all terrestrial things, in order to discover the treasure of evangelical perfection in th<L field of religious discipline. The place he pitched upon for his retirement, in which he might spend the remaining days of his mortality, was mount Sinai, where the Lord heretofore gave his law to Moses, and which from the time that St. Antony and St. Hilarion began to propagate the monastic institute, had always been peopled with holy solitaries. Some of these lived as hermits in lonesome cells, others in the vast monastery on the top of the mountain, which was at this time one of the most celebrated in the church of God; but John chose a middle way, declining the multitude of the convent, as expos ing him to more distractions, and yet not venturing, because he was young and unexperienced, to live quite by himself as an anchoret, he put himself under the discipline of a holy man, who dwelt in a cell on the side of the mountain, whose name was Marty rius, and lived with him for nineteen years, in the exercises of so humble and faithful an obedience, as that he seemed, from his very first entering upon this course of life, to have left his own will behind him: and notwithstanding his great wit and learning, which is so apt to pufll men up, to judge of nothing by his own choice, but to regulate himself in all things, by a humble dependence on the conduct and direction of his superior, as th<a surest way to be conducted and directed by God him* self.

After a trial of four years he made bis solemn profession, by which he eternally dedicated himself to God At which time a holy abbot, who was present, foretold that this young religious man would be one day one of the greatest lights of the Church of God. From the time of his profession, John continued still to live with the same simplicity and humility under the direction of Mnrtyrius, making a continual progress both in virtue and the knowledge of the holy Scriptures, on which he meditated day and night. Marty rius some times took him to visit the saints who dwelt in that neighborhood. One day he brought him to a servant of God whose \iame was Anastasius, who fixing bis eyes upon him, told Martyrius that his disciple would be one day abbot of Mount Sinai, which situation was looked upon in those days as one of the highest pro motions in the whole monastic order, and a dignity to which none were raised but such as were most eminent in sanctity, no others being thought proper to bo the fathers and superiors of so many saints as then in habited that holy mountain. At another time, when they went together to visit John, surnamed the Sabaite, because he had been a disciple of St. Sabas, this holy man, according to the custom of the solitaries, washed the feet cf his guests, beginning with the disciple, and on being asked the reason, he said he did

Dot know who that young- man was, but he believed he saw in him an abbot of mount Sinai.

At the end of nineteen years our Lord took Marty rius to himself, and then our Saint, by the counsel of George the Arsilaite, an eminent servant of God, undertook an anchoretical life in a cell bv himself, at the foot of the mountain, at the distance of five miles from the church, to which nevertheless he repaired on all Saturdays and Sundays to join the rest of the religious in the divine office, to assist at the sacred mys teries, and receive the blessed sacrament. In this hermitage he continued forty years, practising in the highest degree of perfection the three principal virtues of a solitary life, which he has so much recommended in his writings, viz. a total disengagement of his thoughts and heart from temporal things, an incessant watchfulness and continual prayer, which consisted, as we learn from his own doctrine (Grad. 27.) in having God always for his object, and his divine will for his rule in all his exercises, words, thoughts, and in every motion and step that he took, and in doing nothing but in the presence of God, with an internal fervor of spirit. This gift of continual prayer was accompanied by the gift of tears, which he frequently poured forth in private before our Lord, bewailing his sins with the deepest compunction of heart. Nor did his frequent application to the reading of the Scriptures and writings of the Saints, interrupt his prayers or but rather served as a fuel to that inward fire of di vine love, which produced both the one and the other Nor was the knowledge he here acquired, nor the particular lights which the spirit of God imparted to him for the instruction and conduct of others, in the least prejudicial to his humility, or make him think he was left upon earth for any thing else, but to bewail his sins in solitude, and do penance for them.

Many persons, as well religious as seculars, came from time to time to consult him about the concerns of their souls, to whom, with great candor and simplicity, he communicated the lights which God gave him. A solitary, whose name was Moses, not content with only coming to consult him, prevailed on him by the intercession of the ancients of mount Sinai, to receive him in quality of his disciple. This Moses being sent one day by the Saint to fetch earth from a place at some distance for the use of their little garden, the fatigue of the work and the heat of the sun, obliged him, towards noonday, to go and rest himself on the side of a bank, under the shadow of a rock, or great stone, that hung over his head. Here laying himself down he fell fast asleep. In the mean time the Saint, who had been praying in his cell, hap pened also to fall into a slumber, in which there ap peared to him a venerable person, that said: " Dost thou sleep, John, without any concern? get up, for Moses is upon the brink of danger." Having imrnediately awoke upon this admonition, he betook hint' self to his prayers, to beg deliverance for his disciple. But whilst he was praying for him, the divine goodness was pleased that Moses also should hear, as he thought, in his sleep, the voice of his master calling upon him to get up with all speed; upon which he presently started up in a fright, and ran away from the bank, and within less than a minute the great stone under which he had been sleeping fell down, so that had he remained there but one minute longer, he must have been inevitably crushed to death.

The common enemy of the good of souls beholding with an envious eye the great advantage that many reaped from the instructions and spiritual dis courses which the Saint made to those who visited him, stirred up the jealousy of certain persons who pretended to be scandalized at his speaking too much, saying that he was a vain babbler, who only loved to hear himself talk. The Saint, who sought not to promote his own fame, but the glory of God; who l^ad no vain opinion of his own talents, but had only yield ed to speak through the importunity of his brethren, and from an impulse of fraternal charity, far from justifying or excusing himself, or even being offended at what they said of him (believing they had only meant to give him a charitable admonition and fraternal correction), was resolved to comply therewith, and of consequence condemned himself to an inviolable silence, which he kept for a whole year, till at length /hose very men, overcome with his wonderful humility and modesty, and sensible of the detriment they had done the public, by depriving them of his whole some instructions and directions, joined with all the rest of the brethren in begging of the man of God to resume his former practice.

The Saint had now led the life of an anchoret foi the space of forty years in his cell, when all the religious of mount Sinai, with one accord, chose him for their abbot; and notwithstanding all his resistance, obliged him to quit his hermitage to come and be their director and general superior. Thus was this <jreat light set in the candlestick, from thence to cast his bright rays on every, side, to enlighten the whole world. The lustre of his sanctity reached even as far as Rome, from whence our most holy Pontiff, St. Gregory the Great, wrote to him, testifying the great esteem he had of his eminent virtue. It was about this time that John, the abbot of Raithu, a famous monastery on the confines of Egypt, obtained permission of our Saint to commit to writing the great lights he had received from God for directing and conduct ing souls to the very top of the mountain of religious perfection. This he has happily executed in his excellent book, entitled Climax, or the Ladder of thirty steps or degrees of Christian virtues, by which th« toul ascends to the heavenly paradise. It that the Saint, before the composing of this work, had made a visit to a famous monastery in Egypt, supposed to have been of the order or congregation of St. Pachomius, of which he makes frequent mention, bestowing the highest encomiums as well on the holy abbot, as on several of the monks by name. Here he continued a considerable time, and, with the leave of the superior, went also to see the monastery, or rather prison of the penitents, which was distant about a mile off from the abbey, and remained therein thirty days. The wonders of divine grace, which he there discovered in the whole demeanor of these happy penitents, are inserted at large in his fifth step of his Ladder, viz. penitence: of which, as it may serve as a stimulus to penitent sinners, we vshall here give HII abstract.

" Being come," says he, " into this monastery of the penitents, I beheld things which the eye of the slothful has never seen, the ear of the negligent has never heard, and which have never entered into the heart of the sluggard, — things and words capable of doing violence, if I may use the expression, to the Almighty. I saw some of these penitents standing whole nights upright, without allowing themselves any sleep or rest whatsoever; — others, in a pitiful manner, looking up towards heaven, and calling for help from thence with groans, sighs, and prayers; — others, who whilst at prayer, had their hands bound behind them like criminals, bowing down their pale countenances towards the ground, declaring aloud that they were unworthy to lift up their eyes to heaven, and that they durst not presume to speak to God, &c. — I saw some, (says he,) sitting on the floor covered with hair-cloth and ashes, hiding their faces between their knees, and striking their foreheads against the earth; — others beating their breasts with inexpressible contrition of heart, some of whom watered the ground about them with their tears, — others grievously lamenting that they could not weep, — several mourning with a loud cry over their own souls, as we mourn over the de<id corpse of a dear friend, — others ready to roar out for grief, eagerly struggling to stifle the noise of their complaint^, till being no longer able to repress them, they were forced to let them break forth with greater violence; — others appeared so astonished, that one would have supposed them to be statues of brass, so insensible of all things had the excess of their sorrow rendered them. Their heart was plunged in an abyss of humility, and their scorching grief had dried up all their tears, &c. There might you have seen the words of David fulfilled in these holy penitents, I am become miserable, and am bowed down even to the end: 1 walked sorrowful all the day long. I am afflicted find humbled exceedingly. And again, I am smitten us grass and my heart is withered, because I forgot to eat my bread. — For I did eat ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with iveeping. No other words could be beard amongst them, but such as these: woe, woe to me, a miserable sinner; 'tis with justice, O Lord, 'tis with justice; spare us, O Lord, spare us; have mercy on us. — Some of them afflicted themselves by standing parching in the most violent heat of the sun; others, on the contrary, exposed themselves to suffer no less from extremity of the cold.- — Some, in the violence of their thirst, taking a small quantity of water, contented themselves with only tasting of it. whilst others, after eating a morsel of bread, cast the rest away, saying: they were not worthy to eat the food of men, who had acted more like irrational crea tures: there was no room for laughter; — none for idle talk; — none for resentment, anger or contradiction; — none for mirth, the care of the body, good cheer, or the pleasures of eating or drinking; — none for the least spark of vain-glory. No earthly cares distracted them, nor did they know what it was to judge or condemn any man but themselves. Their whole employment, day and night, was to cry to our Lord, and no voice was heard amongst them but that of prayer. Some there were who, beating their breasts with alS their might, as if they were knocking for admittance at the gate of heaven, said to the Lord: O open to us through thy mercy, the gate which we have shut ngainst ourselves by our sins. — Another, shoio us only <% face, 0 Lord, and we shall be saved. — Anothei said, show thyself, 0 Lord, to thy poor supplicant^ tha: sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, &c Having always the hour of death before their eyes, they would say, O what shall our end be? — -What sentence shall then be pronounced upon us? — Will God revoke the judgment we have deserved? — Has our prayer been able to force its way to the presence of the Lord? — Has it been regarded, coming from such unclean hearts and lips as ours? — Has some part at legist of our sins been blotted out? for as they are very great, they stand in need of many penitential labors and sorrows to be wholly effaced. — Who can tell whether even our good angels are near us, to present onr prayers, or whether the stench of our sins has not driven them away? &c. To these interroga tions some replied: who knows, brethren, as the Ninevites said heretofore, but that our Lord may grant u* pardon, and deliver us from that dreadful penance of the world to come? Let us neglect nothing that de pends on us; let us continue to knock at the door of his mercy, even till the end of our lives: perhaps he will yield to our importunity and perseverance; tor he is good and merciful. Let us run, brethren, let us run, for we have need to run, and to run with all our speed, that we may recover what we have lost. Lei us run, and not spare this filthy flesh; let us make it suffer in time, because it has exposed us to the danger of suffering for eternity. Thus said these holy crimi mils, and they were as good as their words. Their knees were hardened by incessant kneeling; — their eyes appeared sunk into their sockets; — the hair of their eye-lids was fallen off by their continual weeping; — their cheeks were rivelled, and, as it were, parched with the scalding brine of their tears; — their breasts bruised with blows," &c.

The Saint having added a great deal more, with regard to the sentiments and dispositions of these holy penitents, and all that he saw and heard during his stay amongst them, concludes his narration in the following manner: "After I had remained thirty days in this prison, I returned to the great monastery, the holy abbot, seeing me quite altered, like a man utterly astonished, and comprehending the cause of my amazement, said: Well, how fares it, father John \ Have you seen the labors and conflicts of our penitents? Yes replied I;— father, I have both seen and admired them, and cannot but esteem them more happy who mourn in this manner, after falling into sin, than those who have not fallen, and therefore bewail not themselves; because it seems to me that their fall has been to them an occasion of a most happy and secure resurrection."

Our Saint, after publishing this boo-k, did not continue long in his station of abbot, but exchanged it for beloved solitude, returning into the desert to prepare himself for eternity. He departed to our Lord, in an advanced age, about the year 005, and his name ia enregistered amongst the Saints, in the Roman Martyrology on the thirtieth of March.