From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   The act of kindness   
      
   The Lord Jesus, true teacher of the precepts that lead to salvation,   
   wished to urge upon the apostles in his own time and all believers   
   today the Christian duty of almsgiving. Use worldly wealth to make   
   friends with the poor, so that when it fails you, when you have spent   
   all you possessed on the needs of the poor and have nothing left, they   
   may welcome you into eternal dwellings. In other words, these same   
   poor people will befriend you by assuring your salvation, for Christ,   
   the giver of eternal rewards, will declare that he himself received   
   the acts of kindness done to them.   
   --Gaudentius of Brescia   
      
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   30 March - St John Climacus   
   also known as St John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus, John the Sinaita   
      
   (c 525-606) aged 80-81   
    Anchorite Monk, Mystic, Poet, Writer, Ascetic. John made, while still   
   young, such progress in learning that he was called the Scholastic.   
      
   A native of Palestine, at 16, John entered a monastery in the   
   Palestinian desert.  After four years of training in a community, he   
   took the vows and an aged abbot foretold that he would some day be one   
   of the greatest lights of  the Church.   
      
   Nineteen years later, on the death of his director, he withdrew into a   
   deeper solitude, where he studied the lives and writings of the Saints   
   and was raised to an unusual height of contemplation. The fame of his   
   holiness and practical wisdom drew crowds around him for advice and   
   consolation. For his greater profit he visited the solitudes of Egypt.   
   He lived forty years as a hermit. Like other desert fathers, he broke   
   his near-total solitude only on Saturdays and Sundays to worship with   
   other hermits and counsel his followers.   
      
   Early in his monastic career John decided that as a mark of submission   
   to God he would receive all criticism as true. Once, for example, some   
   monks reproached him for wasting time in idle conversation. So, to   
   correct what he regarded as a serious fault, for a year John observed   
   absolute silence. Only when his disciples insisted that they needed   
   his spiritual teaching did the saint start speaking again.   
      
   He was induced by a brother abbot to write the rules by which he had   
   guided his life and his book called the Climax, or Ladder of   
   Perfection/The Ladder of Divine Ascent, has been prized in all ages   
   for its wisdom, its clearness and its unction.  He took his name   
   Climacus or “ladder” from his book . The reader who climbed The Ladder   
   ascended thirty steps to holiness. According to St John, the goal was   
   to reach a state of apatheia or passive disinterestedness in earthly   
   life, so as to anticipate the wonders of heaven.   
      
   Each step communicates some practical insight into Christian living   
   that twenty-first-century readers will still find beneficial. An icon   
   known by the same title, Ladder of Divine Ascent, depicts a ladder   
   extending from earth to heaven (cf. Genesis 28:12) Several monks are   
   depicted climbing a ladder; at the top is Jesus, prepared to receive   
   them into Heaven. Also shown are angels helping the climbers and   
   demons attempting to shoot with arrows or drag down the climbers, no   
   matter how high up the ladder they may be. Most versions of the icon   
   show at least one person falling. Often, in the lower right corner St   
   John Climacus himself is shown, gesturing towards the ladder, with   
   rows of monastics behind him.   
      
   When John was seventy he was elected abbot of the monastery at Mount   
   Sinai. That was an appropriate choice, for many monks saw John as a   
   Moses who had received Christian commandments from God and recorded   
   them in his Ladder. After four years in office, John retired to his   
   cell and died there c 606 at around eighty years of age.   
      
   St John’s feast day is 30 March in both the East and West. The Eastern   
   Orthodox Church and the Byzantine Catholic Churches additionally   
   commemorate him on the Fourth Sunday of Great Lent. Many churches are   
   dedicated to him in Russia, including a church and belltower in the   
   Moscow Kremlin.   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   Nor did demons crucify him; it is you who have crucified him and   
   crucify him still, when you delight in your vices and sins.   
   -- Saint Francis of Assisi   
      
   Bible Quote:   
   Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you are like to   
   whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful but within   
   are full of dead men's bones and of all filthiness.   
   So you also outwardly indeed appear to men just: but inwardly you are   
   full of hypocrisy and iniquity. (Mat 23:27-28) DRB   
      
      
   <><><><>   
   Here are some of the spiritual maxims from Saint John's book:   
      
   "Rule your own heart as a king rules over his kingdom, but be subject   
   above all to the supreme ruler, God Himself."  "A person is at the   
   beginning of a prayer when he succeeds in removing distractions which   
   at the beginning beset him. He is at the middle of the prayer when the   
   mind concentrates only on what he is meditating and contemplating. He   
   reaches the end when, with the Lord, the prayer enraptures him."   
      
   "Without weapons there is no way of killing wild animals. Without   
   humility there is no way of conquering anger."  "It is not without   
   risk that one climbs up a defective ladder. And so with honor, praise,   
   and precedence which are all dangerous for humility."   
      
   "In an instant many are pardoned for their mistakes, but no one, in a   
   moment's time, acquires calmness of the soul which requires much time,   
   much trouble and a great deal of help from God."  "The one who is dead   
   can no longer walk. The one who despairs can no longer be saved."   
      
   "A small fire is enough to burn down an entire forest; a little hole   
   may destroy an entire building." "Just as clouds hide the sun so bad   
   thoughts cast shadows over the soul."   
      
   "Birds which are too heavy cannot fly very high. The same is true of   
   those who mistreat their bodies."  "A dried-up puddle is of no use for   
   the pigs and a dried up body is of no use to the devils."   
      
   "A tool which is in good condition may sharpen one which is not in   
   good condition, and a fervent brother may save the person who is only   
   lukewarm about his faith." "The one who says he has faith and   
   continues to go against it resembles a face without eyes"   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)