On this 4th Sunday of Great Lent, the Church gives us an image of the spiritual life that was offered by the great ascetic St. John Climacus, called the ladder of Divine Ascent. In his most famous work, St. John set out a series of 30 steps that his monks must take in order to fully live a life united with Christ.
In order to truly appreciate the image St. John offers us this morning, the first thing we must do is define what a ladder actually does for us. We have many different devices in this life that help us in reaching a higher level. Our iconographer has been using scaffolding to reach the heights of the Church. When he goes to other churches that don’t have a basement and can hold the weight, he uses an automatic lift to reach the heights that are necessary to begin his work.
Our lives as Christians also require us to ascend to new heights and not remain stagnant in our relationship with God. There are some, perhaps even that are reading this article, that see they journey to Christ and their lives as an Orthodox Christian as riding up that automatic lift.
“All I need to do is get on…come on Sunday morning…receive the Eucharist…and I will comfortably be taken to my destination.”
It feels safe, smooth, and doesn’t require any effort on your part except to simply get on. But, as Fr. Barnabas Powell in our retreat these past few days pointed out, it’s an illusion. If you are a “Sunday only Orthodox Christian”, you are deluding yourself into thinking that this journey through life, and into a real and meaningful relationship with God Himself, only requires you to sacrifice 2 hours on a Sunday morning to come to the Divine Liturgy.
To be “Orthodox on purpose”, and not just an automatic lift riding “Sunday Only Christian”, requires us to make a sincere effort to climb the ladder to a relationship with God. We come to services during the week. We pray at home. We should be reading from the Divine Scriptures every single day. We plan and pattern our life and events around the feasts, around the Lenten Services, and around Saturday Vigil and Sunday Divine Liturgies. These are the minimum steps that are necessary to simply begin our ascent…and that’s not to even speak of the other steps that are further up in our climb like fasting, generosity, stillness, and sobriety of the mind and heart.
15 years ago, when I was in much better shape than I am in right now, I took part in a fundraiser for the Ronald McDonald House Charity. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a chicken nugget eating contest…of which I would have been much better prepared! No, for some reason, this fundraiser required lovers of Mcdonalds to “tackle the tower” by climbing Terminal Tower…42 flights of stairs in order to get to the observation deck up at the top.
Thinking I was in much better shape, I vividly remember a sense of excitement at the beginning of this race, while I was waiting for my turn to go up the flight of steps. As soon as that volunteer said “go”, I shot up those steps like “the flash”, even skipping steps as I began my ascent. My dear Mother in Law, a veteran of this event, immediately tried to warn me to slow down, or I would never make it to the top, and in her experienced wisdom, she was right. I went about 5 flights before I realized that if I didn’t slow down, the name of the tower “terminal” was going to be describing me before I get to the top. By the time I got up to the top, I wasn’t met with a cool sip of water, but rather with paramedics who had to do an EKG on me to make sure I was going to be ok.
I share my tackle the tower story for those who are not “Sunday Only Orthodoxy”, but rather to those who have recently converted, or are on their way to becoming Orthodox. When inquirers come into a Church for the first time. They see this ladder that is placed in front of them that is leading them to where they have always wanted to go in their relationship with God. With great emotion, zeal, and enthusiasm, they try to shoot up the ladder as quickly as they can:
“I’m going to fast like the desert fathers and eat locusts and wild honey in honor of St. John the Baptist”
“I’m going to pray for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening”
“Behold, I’m going to sell my home, give it to the poor, and buy a tent so I can camp out on the front lawn of the Church to be near Christ”
To try and shoot up the ladder of Divine Ascent with emotion and zeal alone, will lead to absolute ruin. You will, without a doubt, completely burn out, and fall flat on your face. For every person on the icon that is ascending the ladder, there is an equal (if not more) people who are stumbling and falling off of it.
I put these two images of how not to approach your relationship with God, in the hopes that we will find a sober way to do so in our own life. If you are a Sunday Only Christian, and only give these 2 hours of your life to God, start coming to Vigil on Saturday and add an extra hour and a half to your weekly relationship with Him. If you don’t pray at home, start each day with making the sign of the cross and going through the Trisagion prayers. End each day with going one time around your prayer rope with the words” O Lord Jesus Christ, Have Mercy on Me, The Sinner” after each knot. If you don’t read the scriptures, dust off your bible and read one chapter a day before you go to bed.
Yet, if you are new inquirer or convert, filled with tremendous zeal and wanting to use your excitement to move too quickly…One step at a time dear ones. Put one foot in front of the other…and allow the Church to guide you in your walk to Christ.
Today, on this St. John Climascus Sunday, let us all take a moment to meditate on where we are at in our own ascent to God. If you have begun to climb the ladder, keep going. If you have been skipping up the steps at a breakneck speed, slow down. If you have not yet begun your journey…sober up and ask “what is standing in the way of my relationship with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ…He Who loves me like no one else can…He Who has destroyed my only enemy…death itself.”