Fourth Sunday of the Great Fast – John Climacus, Tone 8; The Holy Priest-Martyr Basil, Presbyter of Ancyra (363)
Great Fast Day 28. The Divine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great is celebrated today.
Read
Mark 9:17-31
Saint John, Abbot of the Monastery of Saint Catherine, on Mount Sinai, who died in 603 AD, wrote an ascetic book called The Ladder of Divine Ascent. This book became one of the greatest classics of Christian spirituality. It has been translated into innumerable languages, both ancient and modern; one of the first books printed in the Western Hemisphere was a Spanish translation of the Ladder: For several centuries there has been a Church Slavonic translation which our monks and nuns made use of; unfortunately, there is as yet no translation into modem Ukrainian.
While the Ladder is definitely an important work of the Eastern Christian tradition, it is by no means confined to the East. The Western Church also knows and honours this book. In the same way, while Saint John, who wrote the Ladder was an abbot and a great master of the monastic life, his book is not just for monks and nuns! As Pope John Paul II has written:
“I will look to monasticism in order to identify those values which I feel are very important today for expressing the contribution of the Christian East to the journey of Christ’s Church towards the Kingdom. While these aspects are at times neither exclusive to monasticism nor to the Eastern heritage they have frequently acquired a particular connotation in themselves. Besides, we are not seeking to make the most of exclusivity, but of the mutual enrichment in what the one Spirit has inspired in the one Church of Christ.
“Monasticism has always been the very soul of the Eastern Churches: the first Christian monks were born in the East and the monastic life was an integral part of the Eastern lumen passed on to the West by the great Fathers of the undivided Church” (Orientale Lumen, 9)
Saint John is one of the greatest of these Fathers. And his writings, like all good spiritual and ascetical writings, should move us to improve our Christian lives. It is impossible to be “static” in our Christian practice; either we ascend further towards God, or we fall back, we fall away.
In the monastic communities of the Byzantine Churches, including our own Ukrainian Church, Saint John’s book The Ladder of Divine Ascent is read aloud every year, during Great Lent. Perhaps we may not necessarily read The Ladder iii our families, but we should try during Lent to read some good book of our traditional spirituality. Such a book should not be read quickly, “in one sitting.” Rather, we try to let such a book teach us, speak to us, and instruct us. For this purpose, we read only a little each day, and we pray, asking God and the Saints to show us, slowly perhaps, how we arc to benefit from this instruction.
(from Our Paschal Pilgrimage by Bishop Basil Losten)