"After a storm at sea there comes a deep calm."

"After a storm at sea there comes a deep calm."

THE WISDOM OF GREAT LENT - from Saint John Climacus (of the Ladder) 

Saint John Climacus (+649 AD) spent forty years living as a solitary, before being elected Abbot of Sinai. "The Ladder of Divine Ascent" - the work of his life - is read during Great Lent in Orthodox Monasteries throughout the world. Here are some quotes from The Ladder:

“The offspring of virtue is perseverance. The fruit and offspring of perseverance is habit and child of habit is character.”

“Fight to escape from your own cleverness. If you do, then you will find salvation and uprightness through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

“When the soul betrays itself and loses the blessed and longed-for fervor, let it carefully investigate the reason for losing it. And let it arm itself with all its longing and zeal against whatever caused this. For the former fervor can return only through the same door through which it was lost.”

“Let us talk about the unholy vice of self-esteem, the beginning and completion of the passions; and let us talk briefly, for to undertake an exhaustive discussion would be to act like someone who inquires into the weight of the winds.”

“This sea is bound to be stirred up and roused and enraged, so as to cast out of it again on to the dry land the wood, and hay, and all the corruption that was brought down into it by the rivers of the passions. Let us watch nature and we shall find that after a storm at sea there comes a deep calm.”

“Those of us who wish to go out of Egypt and to fly from Pharaoh, certainly need some Moses as a mediator with God and from God, who, standing between action and contemplation, will raise hands of prayer for us to God, so that guided by Him we may cross the sea of sin and rout the Amalek of the passions.”

From Saint John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent