The Ladder Set Before Us

The Terrible Mercy of Being Called to Climb

“Ascend, brethren, ascend eagerly, and be resolved in your hearts to ascend.”

— St. John Climacus

On this Sunday the Church places before us the figure of St. John Climacus and with him the terrible image that marked his life and teaching: the ladder rising from earth toward heaven.

It is not an image meant to comfort us.

It is meant to awaken us.

For the ladder reveals something that the modern Christian prefers not to see. The spiritual life is not a vague sentiment, nor a gentle religious atmosphere surrounding our lives. It is an ascent. It is labor. It is struggle. It is the slow and painful reordering of the human heart.

Every rung demands the loss of something.

A man must lose his illusions.

He must lose his excuses.

He must lose the stories he tells about himself.

He must lose the world he carries inside his heart.

The desert fathers knew this well. That is why they loved this book and feared it at the same time. For the ladder exposes the truth that the Kingdom is not entered casually. The soul must pass through renunciation, obedience, watchfulness, humility, tears, and love. Each step strips away another layer of the false self until the man who began the climb can scarcely recognize the one who remains.

This is why the Church reads this witness in the middle of the Fast.

Because by this point many have already grown tired.

The initial fervor has faded. The struggle with the passions continues. Prayer feels dry. The mind wanders. The heart grows discouraged. The soul wonders whether the effort is worth it.

And at that moment the Church quietly places Climacus before us and says:

Continue.

The ladder does not promise ease. It promises transformation.

But the terrifying thing is that the ladder is not only for monks. The Church does not commemorate Climacus in the monastery alone. She places him before the whole body of the faithful.

Before the married.

Before the weary.

Before those living in the noise of cities and the weight of ordinary life.

Because the ladder is ultimately not a map of monasteries. It is a map of the human heart.

Every Christian must climb.

Every Christian must struggle against pride, anger, self-will, forgetfulness of God, and the thousand subtle forms of self-love that bind the soul to the earth.

Every Christian must learn watchfulness.

Every Christian must descend into humility.

And every Christian must eventually discover that he cannot climb by his own strength.

The deeper mystery of the ladder is this.

When a man truly begins to ascend, he discovers that he cannot move at all unless Christ Himself carries him.

The rungs that seemed impossible become possible only through grace. The heart that seemed incapable of love begins to soften. The man who thought himself strong discovers that only the poor can climb.

This is the secret hidden within the severity of Climacus.

The ladder begins in renunciation but it ends in love.

And the One who waits at the top is the same One who descended to the bottom in order to find us.

Christ stands both at the summit and beside the struggler on the first step.

This Sunday the Church does not ask whether we have climbed far.

She asks only one question.

Have we begun?

Or are we still standing at the bottom, admiring the ladder while refusing to place our foot on the first rung?

The desert fathers would say that the most dangerous place in the spiritual life is not the fall.

It is the refusal to climb.

And so the Church calls to us again this Sunday with the voice of the desert:

Ascend.

Not tomorrow.

Not when life becomes easier.

Not when the world becomes quieter.

Now.