VATICAN - Benedict XVI begins a new series of catechesis on John Climacus and his treatise on the spiritual life, the “Scala” with its thirty steps

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - After 20 catecheses dedicated to the Apostle Paul, as it is the Year of St. Paul, the Holy Father Benedict XVI once again took up the presentation of the great writiers of the Church of East and West, introducing the figure of John called Climacus, in the General Audience held on Wednesday, February 11. He was born in 575 and his life unfolded in the years in which Byzantium, capital of the Roman Empire of the East, experienced the greatest crisis of its history. At 16 years of age, John became a monk in Mount Sinai and at age 20 chose to live as a hermit in a cave at the foot of the mountain. But solitude did not keep him from meeting people who desired a spiritual guide, or from visiting certain monasteries close to Alexandria. After 40 years of hermitic life, “in the love of God and for others, years in which he cried, prayed and fought against the demons, he was named abbot of the great monastery of Mt. Sinai and thus returned to the cenobitic life in the monastery. But a few years before his death, nostalgic for the hermitic life, he transferred to a brother, a monk of the same monastery, the guidance of the community. He died after the year 650.” John became famous for (and owes his name to) the work he wrote: “Scala” (klimax), in the West called the “Ladder of Paradise.” As the Holy Father explained, the work “is a complete treatise of the spiritual life, in which John describes the path of a monk, from the renunciation of the world till the perfection of love. It is a path that -- according to this book -- takes place through 30 steps, each one of which is united to the one that comes after. The path can be summarized in three successive phases: the first shows the rupture with the world with the aim of returning to the state of Gospel childlikeness...The voluntary separation from dear people and places permits the soul to enter into deeper communion with God. This renunciation leads to obedience, which is the path of humility through humiliations -- which are never lacking -- on the part of humans...The second phase of the path is made up of spiritual combat against the passions. Each step of the ladder is united with a principal passion, which is defined and diagnosed, indicating as well the therapy and proposing the corresponding virtue. The whole of these steps undoubtedly constitutes the most important treatise of the spiritual strategy that we possess...Of the three first ones -- simplicity, humility and discernment -- John, in line with the desert fathers, considers the latter the most important, that is, the capacity to discern. Every action should be submitted to discernment, everything depends in fact on deep motives, which it is necessary to explore. Here one enters into the depths of the person and tries to awaken in the hermit, in the Christian, the spiritual sensitivity and the 'sense of the heart,' gifts of God: 'As guide and rule of all things, after God, we should follow our conscience'. In this way, one arrives to the tranquility of the soul, the 'esichía,' thanks to which the soul can peer into the abyss of divine mysteries.”
“The state of tranquility, of interior peace, prepares the "esicasta" for prayer, which in John is double: 'corporal prayer' and 'prayer of the heart.' The first is proper to one who must avail of postures of the body: extend the hands, express groans, strike the chest, etc.; the second is spontaneous, because it is an effect of awakening the spiritual sensitivity, gift of God to whom is dedicated the corporal prayer. In John, this takes the name of 'Jesus prayer' and it is made up of the invocation of the name of Jesus, a continuous invocation like breathing...In the end, prayer becomes something very simple, simply the word 'Jesus' becomes one with our breathing.”
The final step of the ladder is dedicated to the supreme "trinity of virtues": faith, hope and above all, charity. “Regarding charity, John speaks also of eros (human love), figure of the matrimonial union of the soul with God. And he chooses yet again the image of fire to express the ardor, light and purification of love by God... But charity is seen as well in direct relation with hope.”
Concluding his catechesis, Benedict XVI emphasized the fact that this work “written by a hermit monk who lived 1,400 years ago” could say something to us today: “such a monastic life is only a great symbol of the life of the baptized, of Christian life. It shows, to say it one way, in large letters what we write every day with little letters. It is a prophetic symbol that reveals what is the life of the baptized, in communion with Christ, with his death and resurrection. For me, it is of particularly importance the fact that the culmination of the scale, the last rungs are at the same time the fundamental, initial, simplest virtues: faith, hope and charity. These are not virtues accessible only to moral heroes, but are the gift of God for all the baptized. In them our life too grows. The beginning is also the end; the starting point is also the arriving point: The whole path goes toward an ever more radical fulfillment of faith, hope and charity. In these virtues, the ladder is present...Let us use, therefore, this ladder of faith, of hope and of charity, and we will thus arrive to true life.” (SL) (Agenzia Fides 12/2/2009)