St. John of the Ladder

St. John of the Ladder, also called John Climacus or John Scholasticus, was born about 579 and entered the monastic life on Mount Sinai as a young man, spending some forty years as a hermit in prayer and solitude before being chosen, late in life, as abbot of the great monastery of St. Catherine at the foot of the mountain. Belonging to the age before the division of East and West, he is venerated as a saint in both the Catholic and the Orthodox Church.

He is remembered above all for his masterwork, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, written at the request of a fellow abbot, which portrays the spiritual life as a ladder of thirty rungs by which the soul climbs, step by step, from the renunciation of vice to the summit of divine love. Combining deep wisdom with practical counsel on the passions and the virtues, it became one of the most influential guides to the ascetic life ever written, read in monasteries down to the present day. He died about 649, and his memory is kept on 30 March.