John Climacus Quotes on God
John Climacus (c. 579 – c. 649), the seventh-century abbot of the monastery at Mount Sinai, gave the Eastern Christian ascetic tradition its most influential pedagogical treatise in The Ladder of Divine Ascent (Klimax) — a thirty-rung programme of monastic spiritual progress whose chapters correspond to the years of the hidden life of Christ before his public ministry. The framework treats the knowledge of God as the terminus of a long ascetic itinerary in which the rungs of bodily renunciation, purification of the passions, and acquisition of the virtues lead through stillness (hesychia) to the apex of pure prayer and contemplative union. The Ladder shaped the subsequent Byzantine hesychast tradition and supplied the principal pre-modern Eastern Christian template for the contemplative life.
Quotes
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Attributed to John Climacus:
“Each rung of the ladder is climbed by labor; the ladder itself is given by grace.”
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Attributed to John Climacus:
“Stillness is not the absence of speech; it is the presence of God.”
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Attributed to John Climacus:
“Tears in the spiritual life are a form of sight.”
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“In hastening to solitude and exile, do not wait for world-loving souls, because the thief comes unexpectedly. In trying to save the careless and indolent along with themselves, many perish with them, because in course of time the fire goes out. As soon as the flame is burning within you, run; for you do not know when it will go out and leave you in darkness. Not all of us are required to save others. The divine Apostle says, ... "Thou therefore who teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?" This is like saying: I do not know whether we must teach others; but teach yourselves at all costs.”
3:4 -
“Even if glory is God-given, yet it is excellent to divert it from oneself with the shield of humility.”
3:21 -
“A monastery is an earthly heaven.”
4:87