Repentance, Humility towards God and Each Other, and Remembering Death

Repentance, Humility towards God and Each Other, 

and Remembering Death 

by Fr Ted Toppses

Sunday the 4^th Week of Lent

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

Today is the Fourth Sunday of Great Lent.  This Sunday is dedicated to St. John Climacus who’s name means St. John of the Ladder.  St. John authored a famous book entitled The Ladder of Divine Ascent.  The Ladder of Divine Ascent is a detailed guide for us to follow in our struggle in Christian life.  The book was clearly written for a monastic audience, but can assist greatly the faithful living in the world.

St. John Climacus lived in the 7^th Century and was a monk at St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai in Egypt.  St. John is named St. John Climacus or St. John of the Ladder because of his famous work The Ladder of Divine Ascent.

We may also be familiar with the 12^th century Icon Of The Ladder of Divine Ascent from St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai which is inspired by this work of St. John and shows people on and off a ladder ascending towards heaven.  Some people in the icon are ascending; some are falling, while all the while demons are shooting arrows of temptations resulting in some people on the ladder falling down.

Repentance is one of the cornerstones of our faith, and is very much woven throughout St. John’s Steps.  Without repentance we are lost in sin and consumed by the earthly desires for the pleasures of this world that eventually will turn to dust.

Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica in his book Our Thoughts Determines Our Lives writes about repentance, he writes  “We need repentance. You see, repentance is not only going to a priest and confessing. We must free ourselves from the obsession of thoughts. We fall many times during our life, and it is absolutely necessary to reveal everything [in Confession] before a priest who is a witness to our repentance. Repentance is the renewal of life. This means we must free ourselves of all our negative traits and turn toward absolute good. No sin is unforgivable except the sin of unrepentance.”

Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives: the Life and Teachings of Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica,  St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood. 2011

How we behave towards one another is also part of the ascent to Christ.  Are we loving and kind even to the lowliest?  Do we judge the person rather than their actions?  Do we lovingly bring the people who we see sinning to Christ, or do we act like the publican seeing ourselves better than them?  We can live an Orthodox life in appearance, but if we are not trying to bring the light of Christ to all people we are wrong.  If we cast other people away because of their sin, so will God do this to us. Our condemnation of a person versus their actions is not from the God who wants repentance and Love and Mercy for all.

 And so we come to another attribute intertwined in the divine ladder. It is Humility.  Humility includes being humble before God and humble with other people not using prideful righteous indignation but praying for one another in love and repenting for each other’s sins before God asking the Lord to forgive the other person who is before us.  God does not accept the proud and arrogant, but the humble and kind.  Only in humility can we truly approach Christ.  We are not to judge people, only actions using mercy and love.  We and should know better than to push away the ones whom God Loves.

One other aspect of the ladder that I will touch upon today is the remembrance of death.  When we know we will die soon we have the time to put our affairs in order. It gives a person a chance to be extra nice, to repent for their sins, to reach out to those they have harmed and bite their tongues when the devil gives us harmful words to speak.  When we remember death we can resist temptation with much more fervor realizing the end of our lives could be today and what excuse do we have at the awesome Judgment seat of Christ.  Will we die tomorrow? We don’t know. We should then do confession and repentance and prayers and love and mercy for today.  We should not put embracing the light of Christ and each other off and make excuses for ourselves.  Not if we want to live.  The remembrance of death gives us the drive and urgency to turn always from sin towards the true light and life in Christ our Lord.

I have touched upon some of the steps in the ladder to God and salvation.  Often in our lives we hear the saying “actions speak louder than words” we need to act and live our faith to reap its true rewards.

Today I have given you three keys that are in our ladder Heaven.

First we must repent and take the opportunity to free ourselves from sin. As Elder Thaddeus says “No sin is unforgivable except the sin of unrepentance”

Second we must humble ourselves to treat each other with love and pray for one another.  Through Humility before God and each other, we free ourselves from harsh judgment remembering Christ will take very personally how we treat each other. 

The third aspect I bring before you of The Divine Ladder is the remembrance of Death.  We as people are procrastinators, and we must not procrastinate.  We must always work hard to be living in the light of Christ at all times of our life.   Remembering that we could die at any moment is not focusing on death but this remembrance teaches us the seriousness of our actions.  Remembering our death gives us a constant reminder and reason to focus our whole life on God and loving each other as the Lord commanded.

May we climb our ladder to Christ.  May we pick ourselves up and climb again when we fall.  May we resist the arrows of the evil one who would like very much for us to fall.  May we follow in the footsteps of the saints on the rungs of the Ladder of Divine Ascent and be led to Christ in this life and the next.

Amen.