FROM STEP 15 OF THE LADDER OF DIVINE ASCENT: CHASTITY
by St. John Climacus
O BE CHASTE is to put on the nature of an
incorporeal being. Chastity is a supernatural
denial of what one is by nature, so that a
mortal and corruptible body is competing in a
truly marvelous way with incorporeal spirits.
A chaste man is someone who has driven out
bodily love by means of divine love, who has
used heavenly fire to quench the fires of the flesh.
A chaste man is completely oblivious to the difference
between bodies.
Anyone trained in chastity should give himself no
credit for any achievements, for a man cannot conquer
what he actually is. When nature is overcome, it should
be admitted that this is due to Him Who is above nature,
since it cannot be denied that the weaker always yields
to the stronger.
The beginning of chastity is refusal to consent to evil
thoughts and occasional dreams and emissions. The
middle stage is to be free of dreams and emissions even
when there are natural movements
of the body brought on by eating
too much. The completion of
chastity comes when mortified
thoughts are followed by a
mortified body.
The chaste man is not someone
with a body undefiled but rather a
person whose members are in
complete subjection to the soul, for
a man is great who is free of
passion even when touched,
though greater still is the man
unhurt by all he has looked on.
Such a man has truly mastered the
fires of earthly beauty by his attention concentrated on
the beauties of heaven. In driving off this dog by means
of prayer he is like someone who has been fighting a
lion. He who subdues it by resistance to it is someone
still chasing an enemy. But the man who has managed to
reduce its hold completely, even when he himself is still
in this life, is someone who has already risen from the
dead.
The man who struggles against this enemy by sweat
and bodily hardships is like someone who has tied his
adversary with a reed. If he fights him with temperance,
sleeplessness, and keeping watch, it is as if he had put
fetters on him. If he fights with humility, calmness, and
thirst, it is as though he had killed the enemy and buried
him in sand, the sand being lowliness since it does
nothing to feed the passions, and is only earth and ashes.
One man keeps this tormentor under control by
struggling hard, another by being humble, another by
divine revelation. The first is like the star of the morning,
the second like the moon when it is full, the third like the
blazing sun. And all three have their home in heaven.
Light comes from the dawn and amid light the sun rises,
so let all that has been said be the light in which to
meditate and learn.
So long as you live, never trust that clay of which you
are made and never depend on it until the time you
stand before Christ Himself.
Among beginners lapses usually occur because of
high living, something that, together with arrogance,
brings down also those who have made some progress.
But among those nearing perfection, a lapse is solely due
to the fact of passing judgment on one’s neighbor.
Pity the man who falls, but pity twice over the man
who causes another to lapse, for he carries the burden of
both as well as the weight of the pleasure tasted by the
other.
Do not imagine that you will overwhelm the demon
of fornication by entering into an argument with him.
Nature is on his side and he has the best of the
argument. So the man who decides to struggle against
the flesh and to overcome it by his own efforts is fighting
in vain. The truth is that unless the
Lord overturns the house of the
flesh and builds the house of the
soul, the man wishing to overcome
it has watched and fasted for
nothing. Offer up to the Lord the
weakness of your nature. Admit
your incapacity and, without your
knowing it, you will win for
yourself the gift of chastity.
Everything created longs
insatiably for its own kind, blood for
blood, the worm for a worm, clay
for clay. And what does flesh desire
if not flesh?
So let us pray that we may always escape from such a
trial because those who slide into the pit fall far below
those others climbing up and down the ladder. And they
have to sweat copiously and practice extreme abstinence
if they are ever to get far enough out of that pit to be able
to start the climb again.
The Lord, being incorruptible and incorporeal,
rejoices in the purity and cleanliness of our bodies. As
for the demons, nothing is said to please them more than
the foul smell of fornication, and nothing delights them
as much as the defilement of the body.
Chastity makes us as familiar with God and as like
Him as any man may be.
The mother of chastity is stillness and obedience.
Often the dispassion of body attained by stillness has
been disturbed whenever the world impinged on it. But
dispassion achieved through obedience is genuine and is
everywhere unshakable.
I have seen humility emerge from pride, and I
thought of the man who said: “Who has fathomed the
mind of the Lord?” (Rom. 11:34). The pit and the fruit of
arrogance is a fall; but a fall is often an occasion of
humility for those willing to profit by it.
The man who observes himself succumbing to some
passion should first of all fight against this, especially if
it has made its abode with him, for until this particular
vice is wiped out it will be useless for us to have
mastered other passions. Kill this Egyptian and we will
surely have sight of God in the bush of humility (cf.
Exod. 2:12; 3:2).
When the devil decides to forge some disgraceful
bond between two people, he goes to work on the
inclinations of each of them--and then lights the fire of
passion.
The body can be defiled by the merest touch, for of all
the senses this is the most dangerous. So think of the
man who wrapped his hand in an
ecclesiastical garment when he was
about to carry his sick mother. Let
your hand be dead to everything
natural otherwise, to your own body
or to that of another.
We have to be especially sober and
watchful when we are lying in bed, for
that is the time when our mind has to
contend with demons outside our
bodies. And if our body is inclined to
be sensual it will easily betray us. So
let the remembrance of death and the
concise Jesus Prayer go to sleep with
you and get up with you, for nothing
helps you as these do when you are
asleep.
Never brood by day over the fantasies that have
occured to you during sleep, for the aim of the demons is
to defile us while we are still awake by causing us to
harp on our dreams.
The place of temptation is the place where we find
ourselves having to put up a bitter fight against the
enemy, and wherever we are not involved in a struggle
is surely the place where the enemy is posing as a friend.
We should strive in all possible ways neither to see
nor to hear of that fruit we have vowed never to taste. It
amazes me to think we could imagine ourselves to be
stronger than the prophet David, something quite
impossible indeed (cf. 2 Kings [2 Sam.] 11:2-4).
After we have fought long and hard against this
demon, this ally of the flesh, after we have driven it out
of our heart, torturing it with the stone of fasting and the
sword of humility, this scourge goes into hiding in our
bodies, like some kind of worm, and it tries to pollute us,
stimulating us to irrational and untimely movements.
This particularly happens to those who have fallen to the
demon of vainglory, for since dirty thoughts no longer
preoccupy their hearts they fall victim to pride.
This demon is especially on the lookout for our weak
moments and will viciously assail us when we are
physically unable to pray against it.
Who has won the battle over the body? The man who
is contrite of heart. And who is contrite of heart? The
man who has denied himself, for how can he fail to be
contrite of heart if he has died to his own will?
Dirty and shameful thoughts in the heart are usually
caused by the deceiver of the heart, the demon of
fornication, and only restraint and indeed a disregard for
them will prove an antidote.
By what rule or manner can I bind this body of mine?
By what precedent can I judge him? Before I can bind
him he is let loose, before I can condemn him I am
reconciled to him, before I can punish him I bow down
to him and feel sorry for him. How can I hate him when
my nature disposes me to love him? How can I break
away from him when I am bound to him forever? How
can I escape from him when he is going to rise with me?
How can I make him incorrupt when he has received a
corruptible nature? How can I argue with him when all
the arguments of nature are on his side?
If I try to bind him through fasting,
then I am passing judgment on my
neighbor who does not fast--with the
result that I am handed over to him
again. If I defeat him by not passing
judgment I turn proud--and I am in
thrall to him once more. He is my
helper and my enemy, my assistant
and my opponent, a protector and a
traitor. I am kind to him and he
assaults me. If I wear him out he gets
weak. If he has a rest he becomes
unruly. If I upset him he cannot stand
it. If I mortify him I endanger myself. If
I strike him down I have nothing left
by which to acquire virtue. I embrace
him. And I turn away from him.
What is this mystery in me? What is the principle of
this mixture of body and soul? How can I be my own
friend and my own enemy? Speak to me! Speak to me,
my yoke-fellow, my nature! I cannot ask anyone else
about you. How can I remain uninjured by you? How
can I escape the danger of my own nature? I have made
a promise to Christ that I will fight you, yet how can I
defeat your tyranny? But this I have resolved, namely,
that I am going to master you.
And this is what the flesh might say in reply: “ I will
never tell you what you do not already know. I will
speak the knowledge we both have. Within me is my
begetter, the love of self. The fire within me is past ease
and things long done. I conceived and give birth to sins,
and they when born beget death by despair in their turn.
And yet if you have learned the sure and rooted
weakness within both you and me, you have manacled
my hands. If you starve your longings, you have bound
my feet, and they can travel no further. If you have taken
up the yoke of obedience, you have cast my yoke aside.
If you have taken possession of humility, you have cut
off my head.
This is the fifteenth reward of victory. He who has
earned it while still alive has died and been resurrected.
From now on he has a taste of the immortality to come.
O Mary, Conceived without original sin, make my
body pure and my soul holy. Hail Mary…
(3 times morning & night)
