Section 05: The Higher Virtues

This section covers Steps 24 through 28 of The Ladder of Divine Ascent — the higher virtues that crown the active life and open onto the contemplative summit. The two files cover, first, simplicity, humility, and the great treatise on discernment (Steps 24–26), and, second, stillness and prayer (Steps 27–28), the threshold of the contemplative life and the home of the Ladder’s most quoted hesychast text.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)

Contents

File Topic
Simplicity, Humility, and Discernment Steps 24–26: guileless simplicity; humility, “a nameless grace” and the one virtue the demons cannot imitate; and the long treatise on discernment (diakrisis) — its three levels, the testing of the three sources of thoughts, and the recapitulation of the whole Ladder
Stillness and Prayer Steps 27–28: hesychia, inner stillness and the guarding of the mind (with Ladder 27.61, “Let the remembrance of Jesus be present with your every breath”); and prayer — “a dialogue and a union of man with God” — and its three stages

How to Use

  • Read Simplicity, Humility, and Discernment for the virtues that complete the active life, with humility as the hinge on which the contemplative gifts safely turn.
  • Read Stillness and Prayer for the threshold of the summit and for the charter text of the later Jesus-Prayer tradition.
  • The summit itself — dispassion and love — follows in Section 06; the hesychast lineage of Step 27 is drawn out in Section 07.

Cross-References