The Ladder of Divine Ascent: Steps 13 - 18
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STEP 13: On Despondency
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-- As we have frequently said, this - we mean despondency - is very often one of the branches of talkativeness, and its first child. And so we have given it its appropriate place in this chain of vices.
-- Despondency is a paralysis of soul, an enervation of the mind, neglect of asceticism, hatred of the vow made. It calls those who are in the world blessed. It accuses God of being merciless and without love for men. It is being languid in
singing psalms, weak in prayer, like iron in service, resolute in manual labour, reliable in obedience.
-- Community life is opposed to despondency. But she is a constant companion of the hermit. She will never leave him till his death, and wrestles with him daily till his end. Seeing an anchorite's cell, she smiles, and creeps up and camps near by.
-- A doctor visits the sick in the morning, but despondency visits ascetics about noonday.
-- Despondency is a pretext for hospitality. She insists that by means of manual labour, alms could be given; and she urges us eagerly to visit the sick, recalling Him who said, I was sick and ye visited Me (Matthew 25:36). She puts it into our
heards to go our visiting the dejected and faint-hearted, and sets one faintheart to comform another.
-- Spiritual heroes come to light at the time of despondency, for nothing procures so many crowns for a monk as the battle with despondency.
-- Observe, and you will find that if you stand on your feet, despondency will battle with you. If you sit, it will suggest that it is better for you to lean back; and it urges you to lean against the wall of the cell; then it persuades you to peep out of the window, by producing noises and footsteps.
This is the thirteenth victory. He who has really gained it has become experienced in all good.
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STEP 14: On That Clamorous Mistress, the Stomach
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-- Gluttony is hypocrisy of the stomach; for when it is glutted, it complains of scarcity; and when it is loaded and bursting, it cries out that it is hungry.
-- Satiety in food is the father of fornication; but affliction of the stomach is an agent of purity.
-- As long as the flesh is in full health, let us observe abstinence at all times and in every place. When it has been tamed (which I do not suppose is possible this side of the grave), then let us hide our accomplishment.
-- The heart of gluttons dreams only of food and eatables, but the heart of those who weep dreams of judgment and castigation.
-- Satiety of the stomach dries the tear sprints, but the stomach when dried produces these waters.
-- He who cherishes his stomach and hopes to overcome the spirit of fornication, is like one who tries to put out a fire with oil.
-- Stint your stomach and you will certainly lock your mouth, because the tongue is strengthened by an abundance of food. Struggle with all your might against the stomach and restrain it with all sobriety. If you labour a little, the Lord will also soon work with you.
-- If you have promised Christ to go by the strait and narrow way, restrain your stomach, because by pleasing it and enlarging it, you break your contract. Attend and you will hear Him who says: "Spacious and broad is the way of the belly
that leads to the perdition of fornication, and many there are who go in by it; because narrow is the gate and strait is the way of fasting that leads to the life of purity, and few there be that find it.
-- The prince of demons is the fallen Lucifer, and the prince of passions is gluttony.
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STEP 15: On Incorruptible Purity and Chastity,
to Which the Corruptible Attain by Toil and Sweat
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-- Purity means that we put on the angelic nature. Purity is the longed-for house of Christ and the earthly heaven of the heart. Purity is a supernatural denial of nature, which means that a mortal and corruptible body is rivalling the celestial
spirits in a truly marvellous way.
-- Chastity is the name which is common to all virtues.
-- He is chaste who has continually acquired perfect insensibility to difference in bodies.
-- The rule and limit of absolute and perfect purity is to be equally disposed towards animate and inanimate bodies, rational and irrational.
-- He is great who remains free from passion when touched. But greater is he who remains unwounded by the sense of sight, and who, by meditation on the beauty of Heaven, has conquered the fire caused by sight.
-- He who fights this adversary by bodily hardship and sweat is like one who has tied his foe with a string. But he who opposes him by temperance, sleeplessness and vigil is like one who puts a yoke on him. He who opposes him by humility, freedom from irritability and thirst is like one who has killed his enemy and hidden him in the sand. And by sand, I mean humility, because it produces no fodder for the passions, but is mere earth and ashes.
-- He who falls is to be pitied. But still more to be pitied is he who causes another to fall, because he bears the burden of the falls of both, and further, the burden of pleasure tasted by the other.
-- Those who are inclined to sensuality often seem sympathetic, merciful, and prone to compunction; while those who care for chastity do not seem to have these qualities to the same extent.
-- Someone told me of an extraordinarily high degree of purity. He said: "A certain man (NOTE: St. Nonnus, Bishop of Heliopolis), on seeing a beautiful woman, thereupon glorified the Creator; and from that one look, he was moved to the love of God and to a fountain of tears. And it was wonderful to see how what would have been a cause of destruction for one was for another the supernatural cause of a crown." If such person always feels and behaves in the same way on similar occasions, then he has risen immortal before the general resurrection.
-- The good Lord shows His great care for us in that the shamelessness of the feminine sex is checked by shyness as with a sort of bit. For if the woman were to run after the man, no flesh would be saved.
-- There is a passionate person more passionate than the passionate, and he will even confess his pollutions with pleasure and enjoyment.
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STEP 16: On Love of Money, or Avarice
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-- After the tyrant just described, many learned teachers next treat of the thousand-headed demon of avarice. We, unlearned as we are, did not wish to change the order of the learned, and we have therefore followed the same convention and rule. So let us first say a little about the disease, and then speak briefly about the remedy.
-- Avarice, or love of money, is the worship of idols, a daughter of unbelief, an excuse for infirmities, a foreboder of old age, a harbinger of drought, a herald of famines.
-- The lover of money sneers at the Gospel, and is a willful transgressor. He who has attained to love scatters his money. But he who says that he lives for love and for money has deceived himself.
-- Do not say that you are collecting money for the poor; with two mites the Kingdom was purchased.
-- The beginning of love of money is the pretext of almsgiving, and the end of it is hatred of the poor. So long as he is collecting he is charitable, but when the money is in hand he tightens his grip.
-- I have seen how men of scant means enriched themselves by living with the poor in spirit, and forgot their first poverty.
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STEP 17: On Non-Permissiveness (that Hastens One Heavenwards)
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-- Non-possessiveness is the resignation of cares, life without anxiety, an unencumbered wayfarer, alienation from sorrow, fidelity to the commandments.
-- A non-possessive monk is lord of the world. He has entrusted his cares to God, and by faith has obtained all men as his servants. He will not tell his need to man, and he receives what comes to him, as from the hand of the Lord.
-- The non-possessive ascetic is a son of detachment, and thinks of what he has as if it were nothing. When he becomes a solitary, he regards everything as refuse. But if he worries about something, he has not yet become non-possessive.
-- Those who live in obedience are strangers to love of money. For where even the body has been given up, what is left to be one's own? Only in one way can they be harmed, namely by being ready and quick to go from place to place. I have seen material possessions make monks patient to remain in one place. But I praise those who are pilgrims for the Lord.
-- He who has tasted the things on high easily despises what is below. But he who has not tasted the things above finds joy in possessions.
-- Let us monks, then, be as trustful as the birds are; for they have no cares, neither do they gather into barns.
-- Great is he who piously renounces possessions, but holy is he who renounces his will. The one will receive a hundredfold, either in money or in graces, but the other will inherit eternal life.
-- In Job there was no trace of avarice; therefore, when he lost everything, he remained undisturbed.
-- The love of money is (and is called) the root of all evils, because it produces hatred, thefts, envy, separations, enmities, storms, remembrance of wrong, hard-heartedness, murders.
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STEP 18: On Insensibility, that is, Deadening of the Soul
And the Death of the Mind Before the Death of the Body
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-- Insensibility both in the body and in the spirit is deadened feeling, which, from long sickness and negligence, lapses into loss of feeling.
-- He who has lost sensibility is a witless philosopher, a self-condemned commentator, a self-contradictory windbag, a blind man who teaches others to see. He talks about healing a wound, and does not stop irritating it. He complains of
sickness, and does not stop eating what is harmful. He prays against it, and immediately goes and does it. And when he has done it, he is angry with himself; and the wretched man is not ashamed of his own words. "I am doing wrong," he cries, and eagerly continues to do so. His mouth prays against his passion, and his body struggles for it. He philosophizes about death, but he behaves as if he were immortal. He groans over the separation of soul and body, but drowses along as if he were eternal. He talks of temperance and self-control, but he lives for gluttony. He reads about the judgment and begins to smile. He reads about vainglory, and is vainglorious while actually reading. He repeats what he has learnt about vigil, and drops asleep on the spot. He praises prayer, but runs from it as from the plague. He blesses obedience, but he is the first to disobey. He praises detachment, but he is not ashamed to be spiteful and to fight for a rag. When angered he becomes bitter, and he is angered again at his bitterness; and he does not feel that, after one defeat, he is suffering another. Having overeaten he repents, and a little later again gives way. He blesses silence, and praises it with a spate of words. He teaches meekness, and during the actual teaching frequently gets angry. Having woken from passion he sighs, and shaking his head, he again yields to passion. He condemns laughter, and lectures on mourning with a smile on his face. Before others he blames himself for being vainglorious, and in blaming himself is only angling for glory for himself. He looks people in the face with passion, and talks about chastity. While frequenting the world, he praises those who live in stillness without realizing that he shames
himself. He extols almsgivers, and reviles beggars. All the time he is his own accuser, and he does not want to come to his senses -- I will say cannot.
from St. John Climacus, "The Ladder of Divine Ascent," (Boston; Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1978), pp. 97 - 126.
