Sunday of St John Climacus

St John Climacus lived from about 579 to 649 and was a monk of the monastery at Mount Sinai (later known as Saint Catherine's Monastery). Traditional accounts hold that he entered monastic life at about sixteen, studying under an elder named Martyrios; after his elder's death he spent some forty years in solitary asceticism in the Sinai desert. The monks eventually persuaded him to serve as their hegumen (abbot) when he was about sixty-five, a duty he fulfilled until his death on March 30, 649.

His epithet 'Climacus' — Greek for 'of the ladder' — was earned from his treatise The Ladder of Divine Ascent (Greek Klimax; Latin Scala Paradisi), composed around 600 at the request of the abbot of the Raithu monastery. The work became so identified with him that it gave him his enduring name in the tradition. In Orthodox estimation the Ladder is considered second only to Holy Scripture as a guide to the spiritual life, and it shaped numerous later saints, including Theodore the Studite, Sergius of Radonezh, and Theophan the Recluse.

The appointment of a Fourth Sunday of Great Lent commemoration of St John appears to date from the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries, based on historical studies of the Lenten Triodion. Because his March 30 feast falls within the Lenten period nearly every year, the Sunday commemoration ensures the faithful can honor him within a full Eucharistic celebration rather than on a weekday when no Liturgy is served. Contemporary homiletical resources for the day — including homilies attributed to St Gregory Palamas and St Justin Popovich — draw the themes of perseverance and spiritual struggle from the Ladder.

The Sunday sets before the faithful a witness of sustained ascetic labor at the very midpoint of the fast. St John's forty years of desert asceticism are offered as a model of persevering repentance and spiritual effort, encouraging those who have completed three weeks of the struggle to endure the three that remain. The Church remembers that 'the battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers of the present darkness' (Ephesians 6:12), and that John's witness demonstrates the great effort required for entry into God's Kingdom.

The theological heart of the commemoration is John's teaching on repentance, which he described as the renewal of baptism and as a contract with God for a second life — language especially apt for the penitential season. The Ladder's central concepts of hesychia (spiritual stillness) and apatheia (dispassion) frame the ascetic path as a graduated ascent of the soul toward God, drawn as an unbroken progression from the renunciation of worldly attachments to the summit of divine love.

By honoring a great ascetic and spiritual guide in the second half of Lent, the Church teaches that the fast is not merely abstention but an ordered ascent in virtue, with the saints' example held before the faithful as both pattern and encouragement.

The commemoration is associated with the icon known as the Ladder of Divine Ascent, which visualizes the theology of St John's treatise. It depicts monks climbing a ladder toward Christ, who appears at its summit. Angels assist the climbers, while demons attempt to drag them off the rungs at every level, making tangible the spiritual warfare John describes. St John Climacus himself typically appears in the lower right corner, gesturing toward the ladder. The iconographic tradition of this image is preserved at Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai across centuries.

The Sunday's proper hymns present St John as both ascetic model and spiritual guide. A Troparion in Tone 1 describes him as a citizen of the desert and an angel in the flesh who received heavenly gifts through fasting, vigil, and prayer, and was given power for healing the sick. A Kontakion in Tone 4 addresses him as a guiding star showing the way to the universe. These hymnographic texts frame him for the faithful in the second half of the fast. Weekday scripture readings during Great Lent are drawn from the Old Testament, chiefly Genesis, Proverbs, and Isaiah.

The commemoration falls within Great Lent, and the Church's practice is to keep the fast throughout this period. A widespread Orthodox custom associated with the day is the reading of The Ladder of Divine Ascent during the Great Fast: it is read aloud in monastic refectories, and its use as Lenten reading for laypeople is likewise recommended. Typikon prescriptions for the fast vary; the faithful keep the discipline under the guidance of their priest.

The Ladder of Divine Ascent is read aloud in monastic refectories during the Great Fast.

Reading the Ladder as Lenten devotional material is a widespread custom for laypeople as well as monastics.

On the Sundays of Great Lent, including this one, the Liturgy of St Basil the Great is served in place of the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom.

• Ephesians 6:12 — 'The battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers of the present darkness' — cited to frame the spiritual warfare of the ascetic struggle.
• Matthew 24:13 — 'He who endures to the end will be saved' — the theme of perseverance drawn from the Ladder in homilies for this Sunday.

The Ladder was composed at Saint Catherine's Monastery at the request of the abbot of the Raithu monastery, using Jacob's ladder as its organizing metaphor for the soul's ascent toward God. It contains thirty steps, or chapters — originally called logoi — deliberately corresponding to the thirty years of Christ's life before his baptism, presented as the divine model for the faithful Christian.

The structure moves in stages: the initial steps treat renunciation and obedience and the general virtues needed for the ascetic life; the middle sections address repentance, affliction, and the combat of the passions with the cultivation of the corresponding virtues; later steps warn against ascetic pitfalls such as pride and laziness and treat the higher virtues of stillness, prayer, and dispassion. The thirtieth and final step is love (agape) itself, described as beyond prayer, stillness, and dispassion.

The work is written in a concise, aphoristic form with parables drawn from monastic experience, and it addresses both anchorites (solitaries) and cenobites (community monks). John also produced a shorter companion work, To the Pastor (Liber ad Pastorem), addressed to monastic superiors as an appendix to the Ladder.