Tomorrow being the Sunday of St. John of the Ladder, it seems fitting to post a passage from his Ladder of Divine Ascent that has lessons not just for monks but also for bloggers. It comes from Chapter 10, “On Slander” (translated by Colm Luibheid and Norman Russell):
Slander is the offspring of hatred, a subtle and yet crass disease, a leech in hiding and escaping notice, wasting and draining away the lifeblood of love. It puts on the appearance of love and is the ambassador of an unholy and uncleanheart. . . .
I have rebuked people who were engaged in slander, and, in self-defense, these evildoers claimed to be acting out of love and concern for the victim of their slander. My answer to that was to say: “Then stop that kind oflove. . . . If, as you insist, you love that man, then do not be making a mockery of him, but pray for him in secret, for this is the kind of love that is acceptable to the Lord. Andremember . . . Judas was one of the company of Christ’s disciples and the robber was in the company of killers [Luke 23:39-43]. Yet what a turnabout there was when the decisive moment arrived!”
If you want to overcome the spirit of slander, blame not the person who falls but the prompting demon. No one wants to sin against God, even though all of us sin without being compelled to it.
I knew a man who sinned openly but repented in secret. I denounced him for being lecherous, but he was chaste in the eyes of God, having propitiated Him by a genuineconversion. . . .
Fire and water do not mix; neither can you mix judgment of others with the desire to repent. If a man commits a sin before you at the very moment of his death, pass no judgment, because the judgment of God is hidden from men. It has happened that men have sinned greatly in the open but have done greater good deeds in secret, so that those who would disparage them have been fooled, with smoke instead of sunlight in their eyes. So listen to me, all you accountants of other people’s faults, listen well; for if, as is certain, it is true that “you shall be judged with the judgment you have used yourselves” (Matt. 7:2), then whatever sin of body or spirit we ascribe to our neighbor we will surely fall intoourselves. . . .
You can always recognize people who are malicious and slanderous. They are filled with the spirit of hatred. Gladly and without a qualm they slander the teaching, the doings and the virtues of theirneighbor. . . .
Self-esteem, even when there are no other attendant vices, can bring a man down. Similarly, if we have got into the habit of passing judgments, we can be destroyed completely by this alone, for the Pharisee was condemned for this very thing [Luke 18:9-14].
A good grape picker chooses to eat ripe grapes and does not pluck what is unripe. A charitable and sensible mind takes careful note of the virtues it observes in another, while the fool goes looking for faults and defects. It is of such a one that it was said, “They have searched out iniquity and died in the search.” (Ps. 63:7)
Do not condemn. Not even if your very eyes are seeing something, for they may be deceived.
St. John did not shrink from making critical comments; at one point (ch. 14) he sharply rebukes Evagrius Ponticus (c. 345-399), a famous ascetic whose counsel about fasting he regarded as “like telling a child to climb the entire ladder in a single stride”. To expose erroneous ideas is healthy and proper debate. To premise every argument on the presumption that those on the other side are acting in bad faith in order to further diabolical agendas is the sin against which the saint warns us.
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