The Ladder of Divine Ascent is an ascetical treatise on avoiding vice and practicing virtue so that at the end, salvation can be obtained. Written by Saint John Climacus initially for monastics, it has become one of the most highly influential and important works used by the Church as far as guiding the faithful to a God-centered life, second only to Holy Scripture.

"To all hastening to write their names in the book of life in the heavens, the present book is a surpassing path. Traveling by this path, we shall see that it infallibly guides those who follow its instructions, preserves them invulnerable to every obstacle and presents to us a firmly-based ladder leading us up from the earthly to the holy of holies, at the summit of which is the God of love."

In essence, The Ladder is composed of 30 steps or rungs, each representing different vices and virtues encountered in the course of one's ascent to spiritual perfection. Beginning with the "renunciation of the World" (i.e. , renunciation of passions and earthly attachments), it guides one along the steps of the ladder of divine ascent as listed below:

1. On renunciation of the world
2. On detachment
3. On exile or pilgrimage; concerning dreams that beginners have
4. On blessed and ever-memorable obedience (in addition to episodes involving many individuals)
5. On painstaking and true repentance which constitutes the life of the holy convicts; and about the Prison
6. On remembrance of death
7. On joy-making mourning
8. On freedom from anger and on meekness
9. On remembrance of wrongs
10. On slander or calumny
11. On talkativeness and silence
12. On lying
13. On despondency
14. On that clamorous mistress, the stomach
15. On incorruptible purity and chastity, to which the corruptible attain by toil and sweat
16. On love of money, or avarice
17. On non-possessiveness (that hastens one Heavenwards)
18. On insensibility, that is, deadening of the soul and the death of the mind before the death of the body
19. On sleep, prayer, and psalmody with the brotherhood
20. On bodily vigil and how to use it to attain spiritual vigil, and how to practice it
21. On unmanly and puerile cowardice
22. On the many forms of vainglory
23. On mad pride and (in the same Step) on unclean blasphemous thoughts; concerning unmentionable blasphemous thoughts
24. On meekness, simplicity, and guilelessness which come not from nature but from conscious effort, and about guile
25. On the destroyer of the passions, most sublime humility, which is rooted in spiritual perception
26. On discernment of thoughts, passions and virtues; on expert discernment; brief summary of all aforementioned
27. On holy stillness of body and soul; different aspects of stillness and how to distinguish them
28. On holy and blessed prayer, the mother of virtues, and on the attitude of mind and body in prayer
29. Concerning Heaven on earth, or Godlike dispassion and perfection, and the resurrection of the soul before the general resurrection
30. Concerning the linking together of the supreme trinity among the virtues; a brief exhortation summarizing all that has said at length in this book

until one attains to perfect love and union with God. Each step contains various short instructions often illustrated by examples from the lives of saints and desert fathers.

The Ladder is particularly suited to Great Lent. Even today it is traditionally read in monasteries during the lenten services. It is not, of course, within our feeble spiritual abilities to ascend the full scale of this divine ladder, but we should at least persuade ourselves to make a firm beginning, taking courage in the words of St. John:

"God gives His rewards not for abundance of gifts and labors, but for ardor of purpose."  

"Repentance is the renewal of baptism. Repentance is a contract with God for a second life. A penitent is a buyer of humility. Repentance is constant distrust of bodily comfort.. :.Repentance is the daughter of hope and the renunciation of despair .... Repentance is reconciliation with the Lord by the practice of good deeds contrary to the sins. Repentance is purification of conscience. Repentance is the voluntary endurance of all afflictions...

"Do not be surprised that you fall every day; do not give up, but stand your around courageously. And assuredly the angel who guards you will honor your patience, While a wound is still fresh and warm it is easy to heal, but old, neglected and festering ones are hard to cure, and require for their care much treatment, cutting, plastering and cauterization. Many from long neglect become incurable. But with God all things are possible...

"We must carefully consider whether our conscience has ceased to accuse us, not as a result of purity, but because it is immersed in evil. A sign of deliverance from our falls is the continual acknowledgment of our indebtedness.

"Nothing equals or excels God's mercies. Therefore he who despairs is committing suicide. A sign of true repentance is the acknowledgment that we deserve all the troubles, visible and invisible, that come to us, and even greater ones. Moses, after seeing God in the bush, returned again to Egypt, that is, to darkness and to the brick-making of Pharoah, symbolical of the spiritual Pharoah. But he went back again to the bush, and not only to the bush but also up the mountain. Whoever has known contemplation will never despair of himself. Job became a beggar, but he became twice as rich again.

"The forgetting of wrongs is a sign of true repentance. But he who dwells on them and thinks that he is repenting is like a man who thinks he is running while he is really asleep..." 

(Quotations from a translation by Archimandrite Lazarus Moore; Eastern Orthodox Books, 1973 (no longer in print); another edition of the Ladder has been more recently published by Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Brookline, MA.)    

Saint John Climacus