Saint John Climacus (579-649)

Before he was a man, ‘Climacus’ was almost a title. John entered history under the name of the work that made him famous. Manuscripts and early witnesses refer to him in various ways: John the Sinaiite (because he lived and died on Sinai), John Scholastic (the learned, the scholar), and above all John Climacus — ho tês Klímakos, ‘the one of the Ladder’^[8]. This last nickname has eclipsed all others.

This identity through the book is no accident: John is one of those authors whose entire life is summed up in a single work. He founded no order, engaged in no great public controversies, sat in no councils. He lived hidden away, in the silence of the desert, and wrote only one treatise. But that treatise shaped Eastern prayer for over a thousand years.

A Life Poorly Dated

The historian must proceed with caution here. Ancient sources on John Climacus are scarce, late, and sometimes contradictory, so his dates remain debated. Byzantine tradition and several liturgical notices place him around 579–649^[9][10]. Other scholars, relying on an ancient notice attributed to a monk Daniel of Raithou and on the chronology of Sinai’s abbots, propose an earlier range: circa 525–606^[11]. Benedict XVI, cautious, accepts ‘born around 575’ and ‘died after 650’^[12].

This uncertainty does not diminish the essential point. All traditions agree on the setting: a man of Mount Sinai, at the turn of the 6th and 7th centuries, in the golden age of Eastern monasticism, who spent most of his life in solitude before guiding his brothers and leaving them a work^[13]. It is this life, not an uncertain chronology, that defines the saint.

Entry to Sinai at Sixteen

According to his ancient biography, John entered the monastery of Mount Sinai at sixteen — the sanctuary set at the foot of Jebel Musa, where, according to tradition, Moses received the Law and saw the Burning Bush^[14][15]. It is one of the oldest Christian monasteries still active, founded in the 6th century under Emperor Justinian, and today known as Saint Catherine’s Monastery.

Young and educated — tradition says he was already versed in secular sciences, hence his nickname Scholastic — John nevertheless chose to leave everything for God. He placed himself under the guidance of an elder, Abbot Martyrius, who trained him in obedience and clothed him in the monastic habit. This initial obedience John would later make the fourth step of his Ladder, one of the longest and most famous^[16].

Forty Years of Hermitage at Tholas

At the death of his master, John took a further step. Around his twenties, he withdrew into solitude at Tholas (Thôla), a hermitage a few kilometres from the monastery^[17][18]. There he remained, according to tradition, for nearly forty years: a life of asceticism, fasting, vigils, study of Scripture, and ceaseless prayer. It was there, in this long silence, that the spiritual experience he would later record matured.

John’s hermitage was not a proud flight: tradition reports that he welcomed visitors, gave counsel, and prayed for those who came to him. His solitude was inhabited. From this long maturation came his finely tuned knowledge of the soul’s passions — anger, vainglory, acedia, pride — and the paths to overcome them. John does not describe the spiritual struggle from the outside: he speaks as one who lived it, day by day, for decades.

“The exercises of prayer are the bulwarks to defend us; the tears of penitence are a bath in which our soul is cleansed of its stains.” — Saint John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, step 4^[19]

The Hegumen Against His Will

Around the age of seventy-five, the monks of Sinai came to fetch him from his solitude and urged him to accept the office of hegumen — abbot — of their monastery^[20][21]. John, who had fled honours all his life, agreed to return to communal life to serve his brothers. It was probably during these years, or shortly before, that he composed The Ladder of Divine Ascent, at the request of another John, abbot of the neighbouring monastery of Raithou, on the shores of the Red Sea.

According to tradition, he governed only a few years, then resigned his office to return to the hermitage and prepare for death. According to Wikipedia (information to be confirmed by an academic source), he is said to have entrusted the hegumenate to his own brother, George^[22]. John died on Sinai, faithful to the mountain where he had entered as a youth — a man of one place, as he was a man of one book.

Here are the milestones of this discreet life, between Sinai, the hermitage of Tholas, and the final return to solitude:

A Book Born of a Request

The Ladder of Divine Ascent is not a treatise that John composed for glory. It is a response. John, Abbot of Raithu, a monastery located on the shores of the Red Sea, asked him to write down, for his monks, the sure path to religious perfection^[34]. John Climacus, out of humility, hesitated; then he obeyed. The book opens with this tone of obedience, by which a monk fulfils a request he feels unworthy to carry out.

The work is addressed primarily to anachoretes and cenobites — hermits and monks living in community — but it soon transcended the monastery walls. The Ladder was, writes the Catholic Encyclopedia, “the most widely used manual of ascetic life in the ancient Greek Church,” translated into Latin, Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, Old Church Slavonic, and many other languages^[35]. Few spiritual books have enjoyed such dissemination.

Thirty Steps for the Thirty Hidden Years of Christ

The guiding image is clear: the spiritual life is a ladder set up from earth to heaven, and the soul climbs it rung by rung. John chooses thirty steps — not by chance, but “in memory of the thirty years of the hidden life of Christ,” the divine model of the religious life^[36][37]. Before beginning his public ministry, Christ lived thirty years in the silence of Nazareth: holiness begins with this hidden, patient, obscure life.

Each step deals with a virtue to acquire or a vice to overcome. One does not skip rungs: one must ascend in order, for each virtue prepares the next, and each passion conquered clears the way for the following step. This is John’s realism: perfection is not a single leap, but a patient progression, where one falls and rises again, where one advances slowly.

“A good foundation is one that is formed by three bases and three columns.” — Saint John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 1, cited by Benedict XVI^[38]

The Three Major Stages

Behind the thirty steps, John outlines three major stages on the path to God^[39]:

1. Breaking with the world. The first steps call for stripping oneself: renunciation, flight from the world, obedience. It is about becoming, according to the Gospel, a child again — recovering the innocence and simplicity that attachment to earthly things had stifled.
2. The struggle against passions. The heart of the book is a detailed anatomy of vices and virtues: penitence and the gift of tears, the fight against anger, slander, lying, acedia, gluttony, avarice, vainglory, pride — and, in contrast, meekness, chastity, poverty, humility. This is a battle conducted under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
3. Christian perfection. The final steps lead to the heights: simplicity, humility, discernment, hesychia (inner peace), prayer, apatheia (freedom from passions), and finally the triad of faith, hope, and charity.

The Table of Thirty Steps

The Ladder has a precise structure. Here, grouped by major sections, are the thirty steps as tradition has handed them down, according to the text of the work itself^[40]:

The twenty-sixth step, on discernment, is by far the most developed: for John, knowing how to distinguish good from evil, grace from illusion, is the virtue that governs all others. And the thirtieth, on charity, is the summit to which all converges.

Obedience, the Root of Freedom

For John, the path begins with obedience — not as humiliation, but as the surest and shortest way to break the tyranny of self-will. The one who obeys ceases to revolve around themselves.

“Blessed is the one who has mortified their own will to the end, and who has entrusted the care of themselves to their master in the Lord: they will stand at the right hand of the Crucified.” — Saint John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, step 4, quoted by Benedict XVI^[41]

This mortification of self-will is not a crushing of the person: it is their liberation. The monk who no longer has to defend his whims becomes available to God. Here John aligns with the entire tradition of the Desert Fathers and anticipates what the Rule of Saint Benedict will say about obedience as the first degree of humility.

Penthos: Compunction and the Gift of Tears

At the heart of John’s spirituality is penthos — compunction, that inner mourning of the soul which weeps for its sins and, in the same movement, tastes the peace of God. Far from being morbid sadness, this mourning is fruitful: it “produces joy.” The seventh step bears this paradoxical and famous title: On Sadness That Produces Joy^[42].

“This blessed source of tears is, in a sense, stronger and more powerful than the waters of baptism. For baptism purifies us from the sins of which we are guilty before receiving this sacrament; but the gift of tears purifies us from all the sins we may afterwards commit in the course of our life.” — Saint John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, step 7^[43]

The gift of tears is, for John, a sign of God’s visitation. Here he touches on a central intuition of Eastern spirituality, which will be found again among the hesychasts and even in the Latin devotion to contrition. The struggle is not meant to harden the soul, but to soften it.

The Battle Against the Passions

The central part of The Ladder is a description of remarkable psychological subtlety of the passions that assail the soul. John does not moralise: he observes, dismantles the mechanisms, reveals the devil’s tricks and the illusions of self-love. The acedia — that spiritual disgust, that weariness of the soul which especially threatens the solitary — receives one of its oldest and most penetrating analyses^[44].

For each vice, John indicates the virtue that overcomes it: to anger, gentleness; to slander, the charity of the tongue; to vainglory, humility; to gluttony, temperance. His pages on the spiritual battle have nourished the entire Christian ascetic tradition; they are still read today as a mirror of the battles of the heart and of humility.

Hesychia and the Jesus Prayer

At the twenty-seventh step, John describes hesychia: that inner peace, that inhabited silence which is not emptiness but fullness, and which disposes the soul to continual prayer. Here he offers one of the oldest formulations of the Jesus Prayer — that ceaseless invocation of the holy Name which will become the heart of Byzantine hesychast spirituality.

“Let the remembrance of Jesus become one with your breathing: then you will know the value of solitude.” — Saint John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, step 27, quoted by Benedict XVI^[45]

To unite the name of Jesus with the very breath: the image is striking. Prayer is no longer a punctual act, but the soul’s breathing, as continuous as that of the body. John is thus one of the great ancient witnesses of this prayer of the heart which will traverse the centuries, from Sinai to Mount Athos.

“Invoke the sweet name of Jesus with a lively and ardent faith, and you will shatter your enemies. These are the most powerful weapons you can find on earth and in heaven, to wage war against timidity.” — Saint John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, step 20^[46]

Apatheia: The Freedom of the Pacified Heart

The twenty-ninth step deals with apatheia — a word poorly translated as “impassibility.” It is not about becoming insensitive, but about reaching that state where disordered passions no longer dominate the soul, where the pacified heart is free to love God without hindrance. This is the threshold of perfection: the man reconciled with himself because he is united to God.

The Summit: Faith, Hope, Charity

At the thirtieth and final step, all converges towards charity. John reprises Saint Paul’s triad (1 Corinthians 13:13): faith, hope, and charity remain — and the greatest of these is charity^[47]. It is the summit of the ladder, where the soul touches God, for “God is charity.”

“We must now consider faith, hope, and charity, virtues which are the foundation and bond of all Christian and religious virtues. Now the greatest and most beautiful of these three virtues is charity; for God Himself is called love.” — Saint John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, step 30^[48]

“Charity and humility are two faithful companions: the first lifts us towards heaven, and the second supports us there and prevents us from descending.” — Saint John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, step 30^[49]

Benedict XVI emphasised the significance of this conclusion: these three virtues are not reserved for “moral champions,” but offered to every baptized person as a gift from God. The Ladder is therefore not an elitist path: it describes, in the words of the monk, the common way of every soul that wishes to ascend towards God^[50].

John’s work inspired one of the most famous icons of Byzantine art. Preserved at the Monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai, dated to the 12th century, The Ladder of Divine Ascent depicts monks climbing a ladder of thirty rungs raised towards Christ, who awaits them at the summit with open arms^[51].

The image is dramatic: while some ascend, black demons armed with arrows and fangs strive to tear the monks from the rungs and hurl them into the jaws of darkness; above, angels support those who persevere. John Climacus himself is often depicted at the head of the line, guiding his brothers. This icon encapsulates the entire book: the spiritual life is a real, exposed ascent, where one can fall at every step—but where the grace of Christ draws and sustains the climber.

A Master for the Entire East — and Beyond

The Ladder of Divine Ascent became, in the centuries that followed, the quintessential ascetic reading in the Greek world. It was copied, commented upon, and translated. Its influence on Byzantine spirituality was immense: it prepared the great hesychast synthesis, and the Jesus Prayer it taught became, on Mount Athos and throughout Orthodoxy, a major path to holiness. The holy Name united with the breath, the attention of the heart, the guarding of thoughts: all these insights were fixed by John on Sinai.

The Latin West did not ignore this treasure: the Ladder was translated into Latin, and the image of the ladder of perfection, the struggle against the passions, and the gift of tears nourished the Latin monastic tradition, related to that of the Desert Fathers and Saint Benedict. John Climacus thus belongs to the shared heritage of the Church’s two lungs, like his junior Saint John of Damascus or his contemporary Saint Maximus the Confessor.

The Fourth Sunday of Great Lent

The most striking sign of John’s authority is liturgical. In the Byzantine rite, the fourth Sunday of Great Lent is dedicated to him: at the heart of the great Paschal ascent, the Eastern Church presents the figure of “John of the Ladder” as a model of conversion and asceticism^[52]. Reading the Ladder during Lent is, in many monasteries, an unbroken tradition for over a thousand years.

The Feast of 30 March

The Catholic Church and the Eastern Churches celebrate Saint John Climacus on 30 March^[53][54][55]. The Roman Martyrology mentions him as abbot of Mount Sinai and author of the Ladder. He is honoured as one of the greatest masters of monastic life, without having received the formal title of Doctor of the Church.

Saint John Climacus speaks to our time with remarkable relevance. Firstly, because he takes the inner struggle seriously: in an age that prefers to manage emotions rather than convert the heart, he reminds us that there are passions to overcome and virtues to acquire within man, and that this requires patient, orderly, and clear-sighted effort.

Secondly, because he teaches a simple and continuous prayer. The Jesus Prayer, the holy Name united with the breath, is a school accessible to all: not a technique, but a presence. Amid the noise of the world, John’s hesychia—the inhabited silence—offers a path of peace that is not an escape but an encounter.

Finally, because he shows that holiness is a gradual ascent. One does not become a saint all at once; one climbs, falls, rises, and begins again. The Ladder is a book of hope for those discouraged by their relapses: each rung climbed prepares another, and at the very top, Christ awaits with open arms.

“Charity does not fall, does not stop in its course, and does not allow the one it has wounded with its divine arrows to rest.” — Saint John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, step 30^[59]

• The Desert Fathers — the great monastic tradition of Egypt and Palestine, of which John is both heir and synthesiser.
• Benedictine Monasticism — the Latin path, sister to that of Sinai, where obedience and humility hold the same central place.
• Saint Maximus the Confessor (579–662) — the great Greek theologian, contemporary of John.
• Saint John Damascene (675–749) — the last of the Greek Fathers, heir to the same spiritual tradition.
• Saint Andrew of Crete (660–740) — the hymnographer of the Great Penitential Canon, a kindred spirit to John’s compunction.
• Growing in the Battle Against Acedia — the vice of the monk so well described by John, and the weapons to overcome it.
• Growing in Humility — the virtue which, for John, supports all others at the foot of the Ladder.