Autor: Climacus, John

Buch: The Ladder of Divine Ascent

Titel: The Ladder of Divine Ascent

Stichwort: Sprosse 3, Exil; Fremdsein des Exilanten (87c)

Kurzinhalt: Exile is a disciplined heart, unheralded wisdom, an unpublicized understanding, a hidden life,... A true exile ... sits like someone of foreign speech among men of other tongues.

Textausschnitt: ... Exile is a disciplined heart, unheralded wisdom, an unpublicized understanding, a hidden life, masked ideals. It is unseen meditation, the striving to be humble, a wish for poverty, the longing for what is divine. It is an outpouring of love, a denial of vainglory, a depth of silence. (Fs)

... Exile is a separation from everything, in order that one may hold on totally to God. It is a chosen route of great grief. An exile is a fugitive, running from all relationships with his own relatives and with strangers. Do not wait for souls enamored of the world when you are pressing on towards solitude and exile. In any case, death comes when least expected. Many set themselves the aim of rescuing the indifferent and the lazy-and end up lost themselves. The flame within them gets dim with the passage of time. So, if you have the fire, run, since you never know when it may be doused, leaving you stranded in darkness. Not all of us are summoned to rescue others. "My brothers, each one of us will give an account of himself to God," says the holy Apostle (Rom. 14:12). Again, he declares, "You teach someone else, but not yourself" (Rom. 2:21). It is as if he were saying, "I do not know about the others, but we have surely to look to what we must do ourselves." (Fs)

86a If you choose to go into exile, then be on the watch for the demon of wandering and of pleasure, since there is an opportunity here for him. (Fs)

86b Detachment is good and its mother is exile. Someone withdrawing from the world for the sake of the Lord is no longer attached to possessions, that he should not appear to be deceived by the passions. If you have left the world, then do not begin to reach out for it. Otherwise your passions will come back to you. Eve had no wish to be driven from Paradise, whereas a monk will abandon his homeland willingly; she would have wished again for the forbidden tree, but he has rebuffed the sure danger coming from the kinship of the flesh. Run from the places of sin as though from a plague. When fruit is not in plain sight, we have no great urge to taste it. (Fs)

86c You have to beware the ways and the guile of thieves. They come with the suggestion to us that we should not really abandon the world. They tell us of the rewards awaiting us if only we stay to look on women and to triumph over our desire for them. This is something we must not give in to at all. Indeed, we must do the very opposite. (Fs)

86d Then again we manage for some time to live away from our relatives. We practice a little piety, compunction, self-control. And then the empty thoughts come tramping toward us, seeking to turn us back to the places we knew. They tell us what a lesson we are, what an example, what a help to those who witnessed our former wicked deeds. If we happen to be articulate and well informed, they assure us that we could be rescuers of souls and teachers to the world. They tell us all this so that we might scatter at sea the treasures we have assembled while in port. So we had better imitate Lot, and certainly not his wife. The soul turning back to the regions from which it came will be like the salt that has lost savor, indeed like that famous pillar. Run from Egypt, run and do not turn back. The heart yearning for the land there will never see Jerusalem, the land of dispassion.1 (Fs)

87a Leaving home, some at the beginning are full of innocence. Their souls are clean. And then they want very much to go back, thinking, perhaps, that they might bring salvation to others, having attained it themselves. Moses, that man who saw God, returned. In his case it was to save the members of his tribe. Still, he ran into many dangers in Egypt and was caught up in the darkness of the world. (Fs)

87b Offend your parents rather than God. He, after all, created and saved us, while they at times even killed the ones they loved, or handed them over to destruction. (Fs)

87c A true exile, despite his possession of knowledge, sits like someone of foreign speech among men of other tongues. (Fs) (notabene)

87d If we have taken up the solitary life, we certainly ought not to abhor our own relations or our own places, but we ought to be careful to avoid any harm that may come from these. Here, as in everything, Christ is our teacher. It often looked as if He were trying to rebuff His earthly parents. Some people said to Him, "Your mother and your brothers are looking for you," and at once Christ gave an example of detachment that was nonetheless free from any harsh feelings. "My mother and my brothers are those who do the will of my Father in heaven," He said (Matt. 12:50). So let your father be the one who is able and willing to labor with you in bearing the burden of your sins, and your mother the compunction that is strong enough to wash away your filth. Let your brother be your companion and rival in the race that leads to heaven, and may the constant thought of death be your spouse. Let your longed-for offspring be the moanings of your heart. May your body be your slave, and your friends the holy powers who can help you at the hour of dying if they become your friends. "This is the generation of those who seek the Lord" (Ps. 23:6). (Fs)

87e If you long for God, you drive out your love for family. Anyone telling you he can combine these yearnings is deceiving himself. "No one can serve two masters" (Matt. 6:24). "I did not come to bring peace on earth," says the Lord, knowing how parents would rise up against sons or brothers who chose to serve Him. "It was for war and the sword" (Matt. 10:34), to separate the lovers of God from the lovers of the world, the materially-minded from the spiritually-minded, the vainglorious from the humble. (Fs)

87f Contradiction and dissent are pleasing to God when they arise from love of Him, but have a care that you do not find yourself swept away on a tide of sentiment while you are yet passionately attached to what was familiar to you. Do not let the tears of parents or friends fill you with pity, lest you find yourself weeping forever in the afterlife. When they circle around you like bees, or rather wasps, when they pour out their laments over you, do not hesitate at all but think at once of your death and keep the eye of your soul directed unswervingly to what it used to do, that you may be able to counteract one pain with another. Our kin, even our friends, make us false-promises so as to restrain us from that noble contest and so as to draw us back to their own goal. We had better withdraw from our own locality. We had better flee to places which are less consoling and more conducive to lack of vanity and to humility. Otherwise we will take flight with our passions. (Fs)

88a You are of noble birth? Hide the fact. You are famous? Do not discuss it. Otherwise your status and your deeds may come into conflict. (Fs)

88b There is no greater example of renunciation than that great man2 who heard the command, "Leave your country and your family and the house of your father" (Gen. 12:1). Obediently he went to a foreign country where the language was different. And so it is that anyone following this model of renunciation is glorified all the more by the Lord. (Fs)

88c But even though this glory is given by God, it is still good to deflect it with the protective shield of humility. When demons or men lavish praise on us for our exile as if it were a great achievement, let us remind ourselves at once of Him Who came down from heaven for our benefit and exiled Himself to earth. Nothing we could ever do would match that. (Fs)

88d An attachment to any of our relations or even to a stranger is hard enough to deal with. It can gradually pull us back toward the world and make cool the fire of our contrition. You cannot look to heaven and to earth at the same time; similarly, if you have not turned your back completely on your relatives and others in thought and in body, you cannot avoid endangering your soul. (Fs)

88e To establish a good and firm character within ourselves is something very difficult and troublesome, and one crisis can destroy what we have worked so hard to set right. Bad, worldly and disorderly company destroys good character (cf. 1 Cor. 15:33). When a man has renounced the world and still returns to its affairs or draws near to it, he will either fall into its snares or will defile his heart with thoughts of it. He may perhaps be uncorrupted himself. But if he comes to feel contempt for those who are corrupted, then assuredly he will join them in their corruption. (Fs)