(A.D. 606.)
[Roman Martyrology and Greek Menologium of the emperor Basil, and
Menæa. Authority:--His Life by Daniel, monk of Raithu, near the Red
Sea, a contemporary.]
S. John, abbot of Mount Sinai, is commonly called Climacus, from a book
written by him, entitled "Climax, or the Ladder of Perfection." As this
treatise shows his erudition, he is also sometimes called Scholasticus,
and, as abbot of Mount Sinai, he is also designated as John the Sinaite.
The place of his birth is not known, nor is the exact year of that
event, but it was probably in 525. At the age of sixteen he ascended
Mount Sinai with the purpose of offering himself to God as a living
acceptable sacrifice. At the age of thirty-five he became a solitary
at Thola, five miles further in the desert, where, in the complete
silence of the barren rocks, he could discipline his tongue, which was
rather given to loquacity. He passed forty years in the service of God,
and in self-mortification. From Thola he returned every Sabbath to
the monastery church to assist at the divine service, and communicate
at the sacred mysteries on that day and the following Sunday. Many
resorted to the cell of S. John for advice, but, as it was reported,
perhaps not without reason, that he made these visits an opportunity
for indulging in his weakness of talking excessively, he condemned
himself to rigorous silence for a whole twelvemonth.
At the age of seventy-five, in 600, S. John left his hermitage
to fill the office of abbot in the monastery of Mount Sinai, and
superior-general of all the monks and hermits of the deserts around.
S. Gregory the Great, who then sat in S. Peter's chair, wrote to the
holy abbot, commending himself to his prayers, and sent him beds and
money for his hospital, for the use of pilgrims to Mount Sinai.
At the request of John, abbot of Raithu, he drew up his "Climax, or
Ladder of Perfection," containing, in thirty chapters, rules for
attaining the thirty steps of religious perfection. This book contains
many curious and instructive anecdotes, illustrative of the monastic
life of the period.
S. John was regarded by his monastic contemporaries as a second
Moses on Sinai, "for he ascended into the mountain of contemplation,
talked with God face to face, and then descended to his fellows in
mind and intelligence, bearing the tables of God's Law, his Ladder of
Perfection."
Once, when S. John was entertaining six hundred pilgrims, a stranger,
habited in linen, after the ancient Jewish fashion, appeared among the
attendants, a man of very ancient and reverend mien, and ministered
with his own hands to the guests. The feast being over, the stranger
vanished, and S. John concluded it must have been Moses who had
re-visited Sinai for a brief moment. This is a curious instance of the
very widely diffused belief in the Wandering Jew. Hebrew legends are
full of similar tales, but the mysterious stranger is with them Elijah;
and the Arabs tell of a similar undying man, who appears at intervals,
but who is El Khoudir, the friend and instructor of Moses.
When S. John was dying in his hermitage, his spiritual son, George,
besought him to suffer him to depart with him. The saint replied, "Thou
shalt follow me in a year's time." And so it was, at the end of a
twelvemonth the disciple joined his master.