Jean Climaque
v. 579-v. 649 7th century Feast day: March 30
Climbing step by step: the spiritual life as patience, where the highest prayer is still a child's.
Who was Jean Climaque?
A monk of Sinai who entered the monastery at sixteen, he lived forty years as a solitary at the foot of the mountain before being elected abbot of Saint Catherine's. At the request of another John, a neighboring abbot, he wrote The Ladder of Divine Ascent: thirty steps of the climb toward God, a book so loved that the monks of the East reread it every Lent. His very name (Climacus, the man of the ladder) comes from the book.
In their own words
Prayer is by nature a dialog and a union of man with God. Its effect is to hold the world together.
In your prayers there is no need for high-flown words, for it is the simple and unsophisticated babblings of children that have more often won the heart of the Father in heaven.
Do not say, after spending a long time at prayer, that nothing has been gained; for you have already gained something.
Angels are a light for monks, and the monastic life is a light for all men.