My beloved brothers and sisters in Christ Our Only True Lord, God, and Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE.
SAINT CLIMACUS THE GERONDA (ELDER) OF THE SINAI (Part II)
As his cell was too near the others, he would often withdraw to a distant cave at the foot of the mountain, which he made an antechamber of heaven by his groans and the tears which fell effortlessly from his eyes like an abundant spring, transfiguring his body as with a "wedding garment." By this blessed affliction and these continual tears, he "did not cease to celebrate daily" and kept perpetual prayer in his heart, which had become like an inviolable fortress against the assaults of evil thoughts (logimoi). Sometimes he was ravished in spirit in the midst of the Angelic choirs, not knowing if he was in the body or out of it, and then with great simplicity he asked God to teach him about the mysteries of theology. When he came out of the furnace of prayer, he sometimes FELT PURIFIED AS IF BY FIRE, AND SOMETIMES TOTALLY RADIANT WITH LIGHT.
As for sleep, he allowed himself just the measure necessary to keep his spirit vigilant in prayer and, before sleeping, he prayed at length, or wrote down on tablets the fruit of his meditations on the inspired Scriptures.
He took great care over many years to keep his virtues hidden from human eyes, but, when God judged that the time had come for him to transmit to others the light he had acquired for the edification of the Church, He led a young monk named Moses to John, who, thanks to the intervention of the other ascetics, succeeded in overcoming the resistance of the man of God, and was accepted as his disciple. One afternoon, when Moses had gone a long way to find earth for their little garden, and had lain down under a large rock to rest, Abba (Father) John, in his cell, received the revelation that Moses was in danger, he immediately seized THE WEAPON OF PRAYER. In the evening when Moses returned, he told John that in his sleep he had, all of a sudden, heard the voice of his elder calling him, at the very moment when the rock began to break away from its moorings and threatened to crush him.
Saint John’s prayer also had the power to heal visible and invisible wounds. It was thus that he delivered a monk from the demon of lust, which had pushed him to the point of despair. On another occasion, he made rain fall. Yet it was above all in the gift of spiritual teaching that God manifested His grace in him. Basing his teaching on his personal experience he generously instructed all those who came to him on the snares which lay in wait for monks in their battle passions and against the prince of this world. This spiritual teaching, however, attracted the jealousy of some who then spread around calumnies about him, accusing him of being a conceited chatterer. Although his conscience was clear. Abba (Father) John did not attempt to justify himself but, seeking rather to take away any pretext from those who sought one, he stopped teaching for a whole year, convinced that it was better to do some slight harm to his friends rather than to exacerbate the resentment of the wicked. All the inhabitants of the desert were edified at his silence and by this proof of humility, and it was only at the insistence of his repentant calumniators that he agreed to receive visitors again.
Filled with all the virtues of the action and contemplation, and having arrived at the summit of the holy ladder through victory over all the passions of the old man, Saint John shone like a star on the Sinai peninsula and was held in awe by all the monks. He thought himself no less of a beginner for all that and, avid to find examples of evangelical conduct, undertook journeys to various Egyptian monasteries. He visited in particular a great coenobitic monastery in the region of Alexandria, a veritable earthly paradise which was governed by a shepherd gifted with infallible discernment. This brotherhood was united by such charity in the Lord, exempt from all familiarity and useless talk, that the monks had scarcely need of the warnings of the superior, for they mutually encouraged each other to a most divine vigilance. Of all their virtues, the most admirable, according to John, was the way they were especially careful never to "injure a brother’s conscience" in the slightest. He was also very edified by a visit to a dependency of this monastery, called "The Prison," where monks who had gravely sinned lived in extreme ascesis and gave extraordinary proofs of repentance, straining by their labors to receive God’s forgiveness. Far from appearing as hard and intolerable, this prison seemed rather to the Saint to be THE MODEL OF MONASTIC LIFE: "A SOUL THAT HAS LOST ITS ONE-TIME CONFIDENCE AND ABANDONED ITS HOPE OF DISPASSION, THAT HAS BROKEN THE SEAL OF CHASTITY, THAT HAS SQUANDERED THE TREASURY OF DIVINE GRACES, THAT HAS BECOME A STRANGER TO DIVINE CONSOLATION, THAT HAS REJECTED THE LORD’S COMMAND…AND THAT IS WOUNDED AND PIERCED BY SORROW AS IT REMEMBERS ALL THIS, WILL NOT ONLY TAKE ON THE LABORS MENTIONED ABOVE WITH ALL EAGERNESS, BUT WILL EVEN DECIDE DEVOUTLY TO KILL ITSELF WITH PENITENTIAL WORKS. IT WILL DO SO IF THERE IS IN IT ONLY THE TINIEST SPARK OF LOVE OR OF FEAR OF THE LORD."
When the Saint had sojourned these 40 years in the desert, he was charged by God, like a second Moses, to be at the head of this new Israel by becoming Egoumenos (Abbot) of the monastery at the foot of the holy mountain (650 A.D.). It is recounted that, on the day of his ENTHRONEMENT, SIX HUNDRED PILGRIMS WERE PRESENT, AND WHEN THEY WERE ALL SEATED FOR THE MEAL, THE GREAT PROPHET MOSES HIMSELF, DRESSED IN A WHITE TUNIC, COULD BE SEEN COMING AND GOING, GIVING ORDERS WITH AUTHORITY TO THE COOKS, THE CELLARERS, THE STEWARDS AND THE OTHER HELPERS.
Having penetrated into the mystical darkness of contemplation, the new Moses, having been initiated into the secrets of the spiritual Law, and coming back down the mountain impassible, his face transfigured by divine grace, ws able to become for all the shepherd, the physician and the spiritual master. Carrying within him the Book written by God, he did not have need of other books to teach his monks the science of the sciences and the art of arts.
The Egoumenos (Abbot) of Raitho, who was also named John, having been informed of the wonderful manner of life of the monks of Sinai, wrote to Saint John, asking him to explain briefly but in an methodical way what those who had embraced the ANGELIC LIFE should do in order to be saved. He who did not know how to go against the wishes of another, thus engraved with the stylus of his own experience the Tablets of the Spiritual Law. He presented this TREATISE AS A LADDER,OF THIRTY STEPS, THAT JACOB, "HE WHO SUPPLANTED THE PASSIONS" CONTEMPLATED WHILE HE WAS LYING ON THE BED OF ASCESIS (Genesis 28:12). In his Orthodox Summa of the spiritual life, which has remained for centuries the outstanding guide TO EVANGELICAL LIVING, BOTH FOR MONKS AND FOR LAY PEOPLE. Saint John does not institute rules but, by practical recommendations, judiciously chosen details and short pithy maxims and riddles often full of humor, he initiates the soul into SPIRITUAL COMBAT AND THE DISCERNMENT OF THOUGHTS. His "word" is brief, dense and tapered, and it penetrates like a sword to the depths of the soul, uncompromisingly cutting out all self-satisfaction, and tracing hypocritical ascesis and egoism to their roots. Like that of Saint Gregory in the theological domain, this "word" is the Gospel put into practice. and it will lead most surely those who let themselves be impregnated by it through an assiduous reading to the gates of heaven, where Christ awaits us.
depar
At the end of his life, the blessed John designated his brother George, who had embraced the hesychast life from the beginning of his renunciation, as his successors a the head of the monastery. When he was about to die, George said to him: "So, you are abandoning me and leaving! I prayed, however, that you would send me to the Lord first, for without you I cannot shepherd this brotherhood." But Saint John reassured him, and said: "Do not grieve and do not be afraid. If I find grace before God, I shall not let you complete even a year after me." And it was so; ten months after John’s falling asleep, George departed in his turn to the Lord. [Resources: Greek Orthodox Archdioce of America)
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"Glory Be To GOD
For
All Things!"
– Saint John Chrysostomos
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With sincere agape in His Divine and Glorious Diakonia (Ministry),
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+ Father George
The Eastern Orthodox Christian Ethos 