Sinai Monasticism and the Lenten Reading

The monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai, where John was tonsured and which he governed as abbot, is among the oldest continuously inhabited Christian houses in the world, raised over the traditional site of the Burning Bush by the order of the Emperor Justinian. Out of the monastic life it shelters came the Ladder of Divine Ascent, and out of the Church’s reading of that book in the season of repentance came the dedication of the Fourth Sunday of Great Lent to its author. This file gathers the place, the practice, and the feast into a single picture and is honest about what cannot be dated.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)

Throughout this collection the Ladder is cited by Step (the work’s own thirty divisions), following the translation of Colm Luibheid and Norman Russell, John Climacus: The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1982); the Step numbering is shared with the revised edition of the Archimandrite Lazarus Moore translation (Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston, 1979), so a reference by Step is locatable in either. Hagiographical claims are pinned to their source rather than asserted as bare fact, per the repository methodology §3.5.

The Monastery of St Catherine at Mount Sinai

The monastery stands in a narrow granite valley at the foot of the mountain identified in tradition with the Sinai of the Exodus, enclosing the site venerated as that of the Burning Bush from which God spoke to Moses (Exodus 3:1–6). Pilgrimage to the spot is older than the present buildings: an earlier chapel at the Bush is traditionally attributed to the Empress Helena (St Helen), mother of Constantine, around the year 330 (Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Wikipedia, locating the primary tradition; Britannica, “Saint Catherine’s Monastery”). The hermits who had gathered in the surrounding desert were, however, exposed to raiding, and the fortified monastery that survives today was raised to protect both them and the holy site.

That fortification and the basilica at its heart were built by the order of the Emperor Justinian I (reigned 527–565). The great church is dated by its own evidence to roughly 548–565: it postdates the death of the Empress Theodora in 548 (she is commemorated in the building but not as living) and predates Justinian’s own death in 565, while an outer phase of the enclosure walls is placed somewhat earlier, around 530 (Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Wikipedia; Britannica, “Saint Catherine’s Monastery”). The house is very widely described as the oldest continuously inhabited (or continuously operating) Christian monastery in the world — a claim of unbroken occupation from the sixth century to the present, which is what gives the place its peculiar weight as a living link to the age of Justinian (Britannica, “Saint Catherine’s Monastery”). It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2002.

The monastery holds one of the greatest manuscript libraries in the Christian world, second only to the Vatican in the number and antiquity of its codices, and it is the find-site of the Codex Sinaiticus, the fourth-century biblical manuscript (Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Wikipedia; Britannica, “Saint Catherine’s Monastery”). Originally dedicated to the Mother of God of the Bush, the house later took the name by which it is now universally known when the relics of St Catherine of Alexandria were, by tradition, translated there and enshrined; the dedication to St Catherine is thus a later overlay on an older foundation (Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Wikipedia). This is the monastery John entered as a young man of about sixteen and, late in his life, governed as abbot — the institutional thread that ties this file to the accounts of his entry to Sinai and his abbacy.

As of 2025 the monastery’s legal and property status was the subject of an Egyptian court ruling reported that year and remained a contested and evolving matter; readers should treat any settled-sounding account of its present juridical situation with caution (reported 2025; status unresolved as of that date, per methodology §4 on dated “as of” notes for live disputes).

Why the Ladder Is Read in Great Lent

The Ladder of Divine Ascent is the pre-eminent ascetical manual of the Christian East — the practical handbook of the monastic struggle, structured as thirty rungs from the renunciation of the world to the summit of love. From an early date the Orthodox monastic tradition appointed it to be read aloud during Great Lent, classically as refectory (trapeza) reading — read to the brethren while they eat in the common hall — and in private cell reading through the weeks of the Fast (Step 1–30; Venerable John Climacus, Orthodox Church in America, oca.org). Both the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese and the Orthodox Church in America describe the Ladder in nearly the same formula, as “a work appointed to be read during Great Lent” (Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, goarch.org, Sunday of St John Climacus; Venerable John Climacus, OCA).

The reason the appointment fits the season so exactly is that the book’s themes are the themes of the Fast. The Ladder is built on repentance, on the gift of tears and mourning (penthos), on the patient war against the passions — gluttony, anger, vainglory, pride — and on the slow ascent through stillness and prayer toward dispassion and love (Step 5, “On Repentance”; Step 7, “On Mourning”; Step 30, “On Love”; Luibheid and Russell, 1982). These are precisely the matters Great Lent sets before every Christian, monastic or not, and the collection treats them directly in its file on repentance and mourning. To read the Ladder through Lent is therefore not an arbitrary custom but a fitting one: the season that reads the book honors its author by living, for forty days, the very ascent he charted.

The Fourth Sunday of Great Lent

The Church keeps the memory of St John Climacus on two days. The first is his fixed feast on March 30, the day of his repose. The second is a movable commemoration on the Fourth Sunday of Great Lent, when his memory is set within the very season that reads his book (Venerable John Climacus and “Fourth Sunday of Great Lent: St John Climacus,” OCA; Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, Sunday of St John Climacus, goarch.org).

The reason for the doubling lies in the structure of the Lenten services. On the weekdays of Great Lent no full Divine Liturgy is celebrated; the Divine Liturgy in its complete form is reserved to Saturdays and Sundays, while on Wednesdays and Fridays only the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts is served. Because the fixed feast of March 30 almost always falls on a Lenten weekday, so beloved a saint would, year after year, be deprived of a full festal Liturgy in his honor. To remedy this, his celebration was transferred to — or doubled upon — a Sunday, when the Liturgy of St Basil the Great is served and a proper festal observance is possible (OCA; GOARCH; The Lenten Triodion, trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware, the appointed Sunday offices). He was chosen for this Sunday, the fourth, as the supreme model of ascetic struggle, placed at the midpoint of the Fast as the very pattern of the ascent the faithful are making toward Pascha (OCA; GOARCH).

The Origin of the Dedication in the Triodion

Here honesty requires a careful note. The dedication of the Fourth Sunday to St John Climacus is not original to the Lenten Triodion but a secondary, post-formative addition of medieval date. The older core of the Lenten Sunday cycle comprises the pre-Lenten preparatory Sundays, the Sunday of Orthodoxy (First Sunday), and the Veneration of the Cross (Third Sunday); the commemorations of St Gregory Palamas (Second Sunday), of St John Climacus (Fourth), and of St Mary of Egypt (Fifth) are later overlays upon that frame (The Lenten Triodion, Ware, Introduction, on the historical layering of the Sunday themes). That at least one of these — the Palamas commemoration — can only have entered after his glorification in 1368 confirms that this outer layer of dedications continued to accrete well into the second millennium.

For the Climacus dedication specifically, no precise date, council, or decree marking its entry into the Triodion could be established from the available sources [Disputed: the Fourth-Sunday dedication to St John Climacus is universally treated as a later, secondary addition to the Lenten Triodion of medieval date (so the historical layering described in Ware's Introduction to *The Lenten Triodion*), but no specific century, synodal act, or decree fixing when it entered the Triodion could be verified from the sources consulted; the present file therefore declines to assert a date]. The responsible statement is the cautious one: the commemoration is old, it is later than the Triodion’s formative core, and its precise origin is not recoverable here.

The Two Penitents of the Second Half

It is no accident that the Fourth and Fifth Sundays stand together. As Climacus is set on the Fourth Sunday as the pattern of disciplined ascetic struggle, so St Mary of Egypt is set on the Fifth as the pattern of radical repentance — the harlot of Alexandria turned solitary of the Jordan desert (OCA; GOARCH, on the Lenten Sunday cycle). The two are the great penitential exemplars of the second half of the Fast, the one a guide who mapped the ascent and the other a soul who climbed it from the depths; the Church places them side by side as the faithful near the end of their own forty-day ascent. Mary’s own life and veneration are treated in her collection.

References

Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Wikipedia (used to locate the primary tradition; not the terminal authority per methodology §2.3).
“Saint Catherine’s Monastery,” Encyclopædia Britannica (britannica.com).
Venerable John Climacus and “Fourth Sunday of Great Lent: St John Climacus,” Orthodox Church in America (oca.org).
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, Feast / Sunday of St John Climacus (goarch.org).
The Lenten Triodion, trans. Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware (London: Faber, 1978; repr. St Tikhon’s Seminary Press), Introduction and the offices of the Sundays of Great Lent.
John Climacus: The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. Colm Luibheid and Norman Russell, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1982); cited by Step (numbering shared with the rev. Moore translation, Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston, 1979).
Holy Scripture: Exodus 3 (the Burning Bush).