Homily for the Sunday of Saint John Climacus
By Fr. Daniel Sysoev
By Fr. Daniel Sysoev
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!
I congratulate you all on the day of commemoration of our father, the Venerable and God-bearing John Climacus, who the Church has established to be celebrated on the fourth Sunday of Great Lent! The Venerable John, in his ABCs of spiritual life, a global textbook on the ascent to Heaven, describes the framework and detailed methods by which this can be achieved. This work — the Ladder — is very important for us now, because people have forgotten what they ought to strive for.
The Apostle Paul says: “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:20). Such an understanding always existed in the ancient Church, and it is preserved among pious Christians. But for many Christians who do not keep watch over themselves, it has been replaced by another feeling — that although they know this, earthly matters seem more important. All these things obscure for us the simple truth that our homeland is in Heaven. There we must ascend; and whoever does not ascend will perish together with this world.
The ladder described by the Venerable John has been seen many times. It was seen by the ancient patriarch Jacob, and by the martyr Perpetua, and by many others. This ladder exists, and we must climb it. If a person forgets about ascending this ladder, he will perish; if he stops, he will begin to fall. Imagine that you are on an escalator going downward, but you need to go up. If you stand still, you will go lower and lower. To ascend upward, you must hasten, and as fast as possible, so that your speed is at least twice as great as the speed of the escalator. The same is true of the path to Heaven: if we stop ascending, we are already falling. And as Climacus said, stopping in the ascent to Heaven is the beginning of a fall. Therefore, we must hasten toward Heaven and examine what we have gained. In the Old and New Testaments, God requires from people a tithe of both property and time. This is still established by the Church and is called Great Lent. We fast not only bodily but also spiritually, in order to gather as many fruits of virtue as possible.
Every Great Lent, the Church gives us the opportunity to examine ourselves, to see what we have gained both over the year and during the fast. Lent is a time to look back. We must see on which of the thirty steps we stand. We must watch ourselves. Here maximum honesty and maximum precision are required — not self-justification and not false humility, because both of these evaluations are extremely dangerous. If we say that we are foolish and sinful people, then we will inevitably fall down, wherever we may be. But our task is to move along the path that leads upward. And we must know honestly and clearly where we are. John Climacus says that it is not fitting for a man covered with gray hair to remain constantly in the first grade. We must see which passions God has overcome in us (we must not say: “I have overcome a passion” — this is incorrect), and which passions remain. We must determine which passions are actively at work within us, and which have subsided.
The same applies to the virtues: we must see which of them we have been taught by God (it is not we who do good, but God works through us), and which virtues we still need to learn. Of course, it is better to examine this every Sunday, but if we constantly “watch” ourselves closely, a person may not notice spiritual growth or decline. It is like how we do not notice the growth of our children when they are always before us, but if we send them away somewhere even for a month, their growth becomes noticeable. So it is with spiritual growth — we must observe it at least once a year, during Great Lent. At this time we should conduct a self-examination, a self-test. It would even be useful to make a map of one’s soul, drawing on a sheet of paper what is more developed in it and what is less. Then we will immediately understand what we need to do, what to fight against, what to cultivate, and what the Lord sustains in us. It is necessary to evaluate our soul with maximum honesty.
We must remember that at any moment we may be taken from here, and woe to us if we have not passed beyond the wall, which is the forgiveness of sins. If our sins are not forgiven, if we are not cleansed and sanctified, then woe to us — we will remain in the desert of passions. If our sins have already been forgiven, then we must go further; we must not stop or grow complacent. We must strive higher and higher until we reach the greatest step of the Ladder — Love, which is union with God and deification. This task must be placed in our heart. We must run and not stop, and not listen to talk that we are unworthy. Christians are indeed worthy; our homeland is in Heaven. Let whoever can be occupied with politics, work, business, family — anything — but all this must be secondary, while the main task for us must be the great ascent to the summit of Heaven. We must remember that a fall is possible even from the heights. One must never trust oneself; a fall from high steps often occurs because of pride and self-reliance. Hasten!
May the mercy of God, through the prayers of John Climacus, be with you!
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
