The Ladder of Repentance
Imagine you’re climbing a mountain. Not just any mountain, but the steepest, most challenging climb of your life. Your legs are burning. Your breath comes in ragged gasps. Each step is a battle against gravity, against your own exhaustion, against the voice inside that whispers, “Just give up.”
This is exactly how many of us experience our spiritual journey.
We begin Lent with such magnificent intentions. We’re going to transform ourselves—pray more deeply, fast more intentionally, confess more honestly. We’re certain this will be the year we truly change. Our first days are filled with resolve: we attend extra services, we read spiritual books, we carefully plan our fasting. And then? Reality sets in.
Oops!
We’ve fallen into a trap as old as humanity itself. We imagine repentance as a single, dramatic moment of transformation. We dream of a spiritual switch that, once flipped, will instantly remake us into saints. We want a quick cure, a spiritual miracle that erases our weaknesses overnight.
But spiritual growth doesn’t work that way.
St. John Climacus understood something profound about our human condition. His “Ladder of Divine Ascent” isn’t a manual for instant holiness—it’s a roadmap of patient, persistent transformation. Think about a real ladder. You don’t leap from the ground to the top rung. You climb carefully, methodically. Some rungs are wobbly. Sometimes you slip and have to catch yourself. Sometimes you need to rest, to catch your breath.
Ugh!
And this is where spiritual discouragement creeps in. We start to notice our repeated failures. We confess the same sins week after week, year after year. The same temptations that plagued us last Lent are still whispering in our ears. We begin to wonder: Am I making any progress at all?
This moment of doubt is dangerous. It’s where many of us give up, believing spiritual growth is only for monks, for saints, for people with seemingly superhuman willpower. We look at our ordinary lives—juggling work, family, a thousand daily distractions—and we think, “This spiritual climb is impossible for me.”
Aha!
But here’s the liberating truth: Repentance isn’t about achieving perfection. It’s about direction. It’s about movement. It’s about choosing, again and again, to turn back toward God.
Consider the saints we commemorate during Lent. St. Mary of Egypt didn’t become a holy figure in an instant. She spent decades in the desert, wrestling with her past, slowly transforming. St. John Climacus himself described the spiritual journey as a lifelong climb, filled with trials, temptations, and small victories.
The hesychastic tradition offers us a beautiful metaphor for this journey. Hesychasm isn’t about grand, dramatic spiritual experiences. It’s about the “deep stillness” of continual prayer, about transforming even our breath into a prayer. Every moment becomes an opportunity for repentance, every breath a step on the ladder.
Whee!
There’s incredible freedom in this understanding. We don’t have to be perfect. We just have to keep moving towards it.
The Jesus Prayer becomes our companion on this journey: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” It’s not a prayer of achievement, but a prayer of continual turning, of persistent hope. We’re not declaring our holiness—we’re acknowledging our need for God’s mercy.
Yeah!
Lent is not a competition. It’s not about who can fast the most strictly or pray the most eloquently. It’s about honest, humble movement toward God.
So keep climbing, brothers and sisters. When you fall—and you will fall—get back up. When you lose focus, return to prayer. Christ isn’t waiting for you at some distant, impossible summit. He’s walking beside you, lifting you with each challenging step, celebrating even your smallest movements toward Him.
Your spiritual journey isn’t a sprint. It’s not even a marathon. It’s a mountain climb. And every single step, no matter how small, brings you closer to the Kingdom of God.
Amen.