Tag: chastity

THE LADDER OF DIVINE ASCENT BY JOHN CLIMACUS: CHASTITY & SIMPLICITY

John brings the topic of chastity to a close in the final three pages of this chapter. He has already exposed the deceptiveness of passions and their devious progress in our souls. He has broken down and demystified the stages of their slow progress and shown us how we can choose to stop them at any stage. 

He now muses about their origins. How is a passion generated? Is it because our body is somehow wired to respond to certain triggers? Is it the context? Is it the environment?  He doesn’t feel pressed to provide an answer. What really matters is not to underestimate them. We should remember that a flickering spark– smell, sight or touch—can grow into a raging fire in no time.   

What is the antidote for being tempted by the thrill of fire? John brings up the role of simplicity as a “breastplate against the cunning evil of the demons.”  He refers to it as “Holy Simplicity.”  Simplicity leads to humility and will guard us against delusion and false pride. It will afford us an uncluttered, clear mind that can detect dangerous passions before they spread.  With simplicity and humility we will not be tempted to overestimate our own power and underestimate the first traces of a passion in our soul, certain that we will be able to stop and control it at will.

Those who are vainglorious, he continuous further down, are particularly prone to priding themselves for rooting out passions through prayer and fasting, unaware of new passions that have taken their place.  Chastity and humility acknowledge our human weakness in being tempted by passions and God’s grace in overcoming them. 

THE LADDER OF DIVINE ASCENT BY JOHN CLIMACUS: ON CHASTITY

“Chastity,” this chapter begins, “means the attainment of an immaterial nature. Chastity means an enviable home of Christ and an earthly paradise for the heart. Chastity means unnatural denial of human nature; a paradoxical quest of the mortal and fragile body toward the bodiless angels.”

Instead of quietly calling for meekness and self-denial, John sets an almost defiant tone from the start. He doesn’t sugar-coat the message. He is asking for no less than to go against human nature. Christians on a path of ascendance to God are not called to be ordinary—simply fulfilling their job description. We are called to be extraordinary and defy all assumptions about the limitations of human nature.

While the chapter admonishes monks to abstain sexually, it also  explores the meaning of chastity  beyond sexuality.

“It is not he who kept his body of clay untainted that is considered chaste,” Johns tells us.  “He who has achieved perfect chastity is the one who has been able to subjugate the members of his body to the soul”

Chastity is not only physical abstinence in the letter of the law, but the ability to overcome passions and replace them with purity and simplicity. Unlike passions, a life of chastity does not draw us to it because it is exciting, flashy or prestigious. And this is perhaps the toughest part of the challenge—giving up the pursuit of grand goals and the thrill of intense passion and excess for what on the surface seems to be a merely simple life.

John does not let us get by with fantasy, however. He exposes the false “high” of passions by conjuring up a images of lives lived in excess of sex, indulgence, soft living and gluttony that are defiling the soul the way bad food upsets the stomach and can even poison you.

How do you fight passions?  We are warned of the danger of seemingly overcoming one passion when, in reality, we are simply replacing it with another. The man who thinks he can overcome fornication by stuffing himself, John tells us, is like “someone who quenches fire with oil.”   

Paradoxically, satisfying passions does not quench the thirst. On the contrary, the more we indulge in them, the greater the thirst becomes and hence the higher our need for excess and indulgence.  An unchaste life is a life spiraling out of control.  As in the case of chemical addictions, denial is one of the greatest dangers.  It allows us to relax our vigilance and allow the tiny urges or small indulgences that can flame into all-consuming passions.   John is telling us, in essence, what programs like Alcoholics Anonymous have come to understand: the first step is to admit that you are powerless.

Passions arise insidiously, in tiny, gradual steps that are easy to miss. The weapon is vigilance and mourning, coupled with discipline for stopping passions before they grow and dominate.