Feast day: March 30th
In the year 600 AD, St. Gregory the Great penned a letter to the abbot of the famous St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai. (Yes, that would be where Moses encountered the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the burning bush, and where God gave His people the gift of the Ten Commandments.) Back in the early ages of the Church already some of the first desert fathers made their way here – it is the oldest continuously inhabited monastery in the world – and was originally entrusted to Mary. This because Our Lady, being the God-bearer, the theotokus, fulfills spectacularly what was foreseen in the burning bush – a bush on fire yet unburned; a mother, still a virgin, and manifesting the Lord in an even more extraordinary way! Some centuries later, it was now named after the famous St. Catherine of Alexandria whose relics had been enshrined there. Some 170 saints would come from this monastery in the centuries since, and the man that Gregory was writing to was one of them.
Gregory to John, Abbot of Mount Sina[i],
The Epistle of thy Humility testifies to the holiness of thy life; whence we give great thanks to Almighty God, for that we know that there are still some to pray for our sins. For we, under the colour of ecclesiastical government, are tossed in the billows of this world, which frequently overwhelm us. But by the protecting hand of heavenly grace we are raised up again from the deep. Do you, then, who lead a tranquil life in the so great serenity of your rest, and stand as it were safe on the shore, extend the hand of your prayer to us who are on our voyage, or rather who are suffering shipwreck, and with all the supplications in your power help us as we strive to reach the land of the living, so that not only for your own life, but also for our rescue, you may have reward for ever. May the Holy Trinity protect thy Love with the right hand of Its protection, and grant unto thee in Its sight, by praying, by admonishing, by shewing example of good work, to feed the flock committed to thee, that so thou mayest be able to reach the pastures of eternal life with the flock itself which thou feedest. For it is written, My sheep shall come and shall find pastures [John 10]. And these pastures in truth we find, when, freed from the winter of this life, we are satisfied with the greenness of eternal life, as of a new Spring.
We have learnt from the report of our son Simplicius that there is a want of beds and bedding in the Gerontocomium[for the elderly], which has been constructed by one Isaurus there. Wherefore we have sent 15 cloaks, 30 rachanæ[probably some kind of cloak or blanket], and 15 beds. We have also given money for the purchase of mattresses and for their transport, which we beg thy Love not to disdain, but to supply them to the place for which they have been sent.
Given on the day of the Kalends of September, Indiction 4. [September 1, 600 A.D].
We do not know very much about “John”, though the surname “Climacus” is how we know him now, a simple phrase in Greek, “tēs klimakos”, “of the ladder”, for he was the author of a spiritual work “The Ladder of Perfection.” He was in his 70s when Gregory wrote to him, having spent decades as a hermit at the base of that mountain learning from another monk, Martyrius, and then studying the lives of the saints. At an elderly age, he had been begged by the monks of St. Catherine’s to become their leader and mentor. It was as an older, and famously holy, man that he wrote “the ladder”, modeled after the image of Jacob’s Ladder, with some thirty rungs making up the steps necessary to progress in holiness. The image has become a famous icon, depicting the ladder, with St. John helping others up towards heaven (with demons attempting to pull them off), and copies can be found all over the world (one is in bishop’s chapel upstairs!)
– Fr. Dominic will return to Sinai, and again to one of our Popes next week!