Step 6: Remembrance of Death

“The remembrance of death … produces freedom from daily worries, and breeds constant prayer and guarding of the mind, virtues that are the cause and effect of the thought of death.”

--St. John Climacus

“’Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ‘Yes,’ said the Spirit, ‘Let them find rest from their labors, for their works accompany them.’”

--Revelation 14:13

In art, monks and mystics are sometimes shown holding human skulls.  This is to symbolize an important spiritual practice; the contemplation of death.  Far from being a morbid preoccupation, remembering that we are mortal, finite beings who will one day stand before our Creator and give an account of our lives is a healthy encouragement to make the most of the time that we have.

Turning on the nightly news provides us with countless reminders of how fragile life us.  They can drive a person to despair or they can drive a person to action.  I am not referring here to action in terms of confronting issues of violence, justice, or poverty that lead to death.  These are important and necessary.  But I am more concerned in the context of these devotions with actions that we can take to further our spiritual growth. 

As I mentioned above, the remembrance of death can spur us to ask healthy questions about how we are using the gift of our lives.  How much of what I do during the day is really of lasting significance?  How much do the things I worry and fret over really matter?  Have I been faithful to my family, my community, my calling as a Christian?  We will be held accountable for how we use our time on earth. 

Contemplating death also helps us to cherish life and those whose lives are so important to us.  And it reminds us that we are not all-powerful and self-sufficient.  Every day of breathing in and breathing out is a gift from God.

Prayer:

O God, teach us to count our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart, through Christ our Lord,  Amen.

St. John Climacus, pray for us.

Step 5: Penitence

“Repentance is the renewal of baptism and is a contract with God for a fresh start in life. …Repentance is the daughter of hope and the refusal of despair.”

--St. John Climacus

“But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.”

--Luke 15:32

As many of you know, my wife Pam and I became Catholic in 2003.  One of my favorite experiences in the process of coming into the Church was my first experience of the sacrament of Penance.  I will never forget the feeling of lightness and newness.  Coming away from Confession I felt that there was hope for me; hope in the sense that I was reassured that God still loved me and hope that I could become a better person.

It might seem strange to some to put repentance and hopefulness together, but as St. John reminds us, the possibility of repentance is a sign that God has not and never will give up on us.  There is nothing that we can do that is so evil, so wrong, that it would make God stop loving us.  When we separate ourselves from God by choosing to do things that run counter to God’s nature and his will for us, God never stops reaching out to us, calling us back, longing and looking for us like the father in the story of the Prodigal Son from Luke’s Gospel.

Real repentance requires that we take our sin seriously.  We sometimes dismiss sin as a mere faux pas, a trivial mistake, when in fact, the consequences of sin that is not dealt with are serious.  Sin that is not repented of and confessed can dull our consciences, making us susceptible to worse sin.  It makes it harder for us to hear God or feel his presence.  And it limits God’s ability to give us the help of his grace.

Is there something in your life that is blocking the flow of God’s grace?  Turn away from it.  Repent.  Go to Confession and be free of it.  And know that as often as we need it, the forgiveness of God is always there for us.

Prayer:

O God, your mercy is from everlasting to everlasting.  As far as the East is from the West, so far have you promised to remove our sins from us.  Help us to trust in your mercy, turn away from our sins, and turn to you, so that cleansed and renewed, we might continue to walk with you in hope, through Christ our Lord, Amen.

St. John Climacus, pray for us.

Step 4: Obedience

“From obedience comes humility,…And from humility comes discernment… From discernment comes insight, and from insight comes foresight.  And who would not run this fine race of obedience when such blessings are there ahead of him.”

--St. John Climacus

“Although he (Jesus) was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and being made perfect he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him.”

--Hebrews 5:8-9

In this step and the one that follows, Climacus cites examples of monastic discipline that seem extreme to us, even cruel and debasing.  We live in a different age from John.  Some of the particular practices he recommends would probably be unhealthy for us.  But we shouldn’t let that blind us to the valuable principles that he can teach us.

Obedience is all about openness to being taught.  It’s a trait that is not very popular today because it requires the humility to admit that I do not know everything and I need to improve some areas of my life.  It also requires that I trust someone else enough to let them help me learn what I do not know and acquire those virtues that I do not possess.  Humility and trust, along with obedience are not big hits in America today.

They are, however, essential traits of the Christian.  Christ made himself obedient to the will of the Father even to the point of death.  As Christ’s disciples, those called to mirror his existence in the world today, we must be seeking to know and do the will of God which was revealed to the Apostles and has been handed down to us by their successors.   Climacus writes specifically about the obedience that one should give to one’s spiritual director.  Many have benefited from this type of relationship.  On another level, we must also listen to the Spirit and to the shepherds of the Church as we interpret God’s will for our own lives.  We must trust the Church enough to allow ourselves to be taught by its wisdom and experience.

This is a difficult thing to do.  We all know of the terrible abuses of trust that have taken place.  The Church has been instituted by God, but it is made up of sinful human beings.  I am not saying that we should never question.  And we need to hold our leaders accountable.  All of us together are, after all, the Church.  But the fact remains that our shepherds, the bishops and priests, have been charged with teaching God’s Word and handing on the Tradition of the faith.

How open are you to being taught?  How do you react to the Church’s teaching authority, with respect or resentment?  There is a lot of pain and confusion out there.  Obedience is a hard word.   For some, it may be too much to ask that they do whatever the Church teaches.  But is it too much to ask that we stay open enough to listen to her?

Prayer:

O God, your will for us is that we might have life in all its fullness.  Conform our wills to yours.  Expand our hope and save us from our own cramped vision of what is possible, through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

St. John Climacus, pray for us.

Step 3: Exile

“A true exile, despite his possession of knowledge, sits like someone of foreign speech among men of other tongues”

--St. John Climacus

“Beloved, I urge you as aliens and sojourners to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against the soul.  Maintain good conduct among the Gentiles, so that if they speak of you as evildoers, they may observe your good works and glorify God on the day of visitation.”

--1 Peter 2:11-12

Have you ever experienced what it’s like not to fit in?  Most of us probably have at some point been the new kid on the block or the new person on the job.  Often the feeling of being a stranger in a strange land wears off after awhile.  We become acclimated to a new environment.  We learn the lay of the land.  We learn the rules, written and unwritten.  We learn who to trust and who to watch out for.

One of the challenging things about growing in the Christian life is, the deeper we grow in Christ, the less at home we feel with the world as it is.  When Christ Jesus comes to us, bringing the kingdom of God with him, he invites us into a different way of being.  It’s not a new way.  In fact, it’s the oldest way, the first way, the way of communion with God and with our fellow creatures, the way of Eden.  Humankind abandoned this way and the result has been the breaking of communion.  We have only the faintest idea, the dimmest memory, of what that way of being was like.

Christ has come to remind us and to bring us home.  But we have become so used to living in a broken world that the ways of our true home have become strange to us.  As we relearn those ways, the ways of love, justice, peace, and holiness, we ourselves become strangers to the world we once called home.  We live in two worlds.

Those of us who have had the experience of being immigrants may have a deeper understanding of how this feels.  As Christians we are all immigrants.  And we are all struggling to find our place. We need the strength of the Spirit to stand for the truth of God in a world that sometimes resists it.  We need the gentleness of the Spirit to speak the truth in love.  We need the patience and perseverance of the Spirit to remain faithfully in the world, but not of it.

Prayer:

O God, you invite us to a new and beautiful home where we will all be one in you.  We are not there yet, but we are on the way.  Help us as we live in a world that is not yet our home to remain faithful as we journey toward your kingdom, through Christ our Lord, Amen.

St. John Climacus, pray for us.

Detachment

“If you truly love God… then it will not be possible to have an attachment, or anxiety, or concern for money, for possessions, for family relationships, for worldly glory, for love and brotherhood, indeed for anything of earth.”

--St. John Climacus

“Do not love the world or the things of the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”

--1 John 2:15

To my mind, one of the most controversial things that Jesus ever said appears in Luke 15:26, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”  In this saying we hear the demands of the jealous God of Sinai who commands that we have no other gods before him.  How are we to understand this shocking ultimatum?  The answer, I think, is not that we should stop loving our families and others who are important to us or that we should not enjoy this marvelous world in which God has placed us, but that we should learn to love and enjoy them in the right way.

Pam and I used to have a Black Labrador Retriever named Rosie.  We called her our baby, but she was not a baby, she was a dog and we loved her dearly as a dog.  If we had expected her to act like a human child, all three of us would have been very frustrated.  We treated Rosie in ways that were appropriate to her dog-ness.  We all need to learn to love our fellow creatures, both things, like cars and food, and people, like spouses and sports heroes, in ways that are appropriate to their created-ness.

There is only one Necessary Being and that’s God.  The rest of us have been born out of the overflow of his life and love.  I love my family.  How much more should I love the God who gave them to me and who gave me the capacity to love in the first place?  God is our source and our destiny, the spring from which we flow and the ocean into which we empty.  When we remember that, our relationship with everyone and everything else is kept in proper perspective.

Prayer:

O God, help us to love you first and best so that we might use the good things of this world wisely and love our fellow creatures freely.  We turn over all our needs and wants to you, knowing that you alone can satisfy us.  We entrust those we love to your care, knowing that they do not belong to us, but to you, and we thank you for sharing them with us as we walk this earth together, through Christ our Lord, Amen.

St. John Climacus, pray for us.

Introduction

“Ascend, my brothers, ascend eagerly.  Let your hearts’ resolve be to climb.  Listen to the voice of one who says, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of our God’ (Isaiah 2:3), who makes your feet to be like the feet of the deer, ‘Who sets us on the high places that we might be triumphant on His road’ (Habakkuk 3:19)”

--St. John Climacus

This is an invitation.  It’s an invitation to go up higher, to draw nearer to God.  Like most trips into the high country it is best taken in the company of friends and with the help of an experienced guide.  For company I offer myself and some e-connected fellow pilgrims.  For our guide may I suggest St. John Climacus, author of the spiritual classic, The Ladder of Divine Ascent. 

John was the abbot of a monastery on Mt. Sinai during the 7^th century.  His reputation for holiness and skill in helping his brother monks on their spiritual journey led to an invitation from a neighboring monastic community to write down his approach to growing in the love of God.  The result was the book, The Ladder of Divine Ascent.  In The Ladder Climacus uses the Old Testament imagery of Jacob’s ladder (Genesis 28:12), a stairway between heaven and earth, to describe a series of steps or stages by which we may ascend toward knowledge and love of God.

You may be asking yourself, “How relevant can a book written by a 1400-year-old Middle Eastern hermit be?  What can a dusty old monk have to say to 21^st century Christians?”  I believe there is much we can learn from St. John of the Ladder.  He had to deal with many of the same issues and obstacles to spirituality that we face today: setting priorities, distractions, unhealthy appetites, relationships.   Climacus knows that there are things that are pulling us down, keeping us from real communion with God.  He is also encouraging, and knows that God is eager to help us and wants us to come to him.  And as a brother in Christ, Climacus shares with us a common goal, developing a love relationship with God.  Unlike some of his contemporaries, he doesn’t dwell on the contemplation of God, which can seem abstract or impersonal.  For Climacus the ultimate is a warm personal connection with God.  We can all relate to that.

Through the centuries The Ladder has proven itself very useful to Christians pursuing the upward call of Christ.  Shall we join them?  Let’s make the climb together.

Prayer:

O God, you call us all to yourself.  In this season of Lent we hear your call anew and recommit ourselves to climbing step by step toward our goal of communion with you, through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

St. John Climacus, pray for us.