Baring-Gould’s sources: Roman Martyrology and Greek Menologium of the emperor Basil, and Menæa. Authority:—His Life by Daniel, monk of Raithu, near the Red Sea, a contemporary.
S. John, abbot of Mount Sinai, is commonly called Climacus, from a book written by him, entitled "Climax, or the Ladder of Perfection." As this treatise shows his erudition, he is also sometimes called Scholasticus, and, as abbot of Mount Sinai, he is also designated as John the Sinaite.
The place of his birth is not known, nor is the exact year of that event, but it was probably in 525. At the age of sixteen he ascended Mount Sinai with the purpose of offering himself to God as a living acceptable sacrifice. At the age of thirty-five he became a solitary at Thola, five miles further in the desert, where, in the complete silence of the barren rocks, he could discipline his tongue, which was rather given to loquacity. He passed forty years in the service of God, and in self-mortification. From Thola he returned every Sabbath to the monastery church to assist at the divine service, and communicate at the sacred mysteries on that day and the following Sunday. Many resorted to the cell of S. John for advice, but, as it was reported, perhaps not without reason, that he made these visits an opportunity for indulging in his weakness of talking excessively, he condemned himself to rigorous silence for a whole twelvemonth.
At the age of seventy-five, in 600, S. John left his hermitage to fill the office of abbot in the monastery of Mount Sinai, and superior-general of all the monks and hermits of the deserts around.
S. Gregory the Great, who then sat in S. Peter's chair, wrote to the holy abbot, commending himself to his prayers, and sent him beds and money for his hospital, for the use of pilgrims to Mount Sinai.
At the request of John, abbot of Raithu, he drew up his "Climax, or Ladder of Perfection," containing, in thirty chapters, rules for attaining the thirty steps of religious perfection. This book contains many curious and instructive anecdotes, illustrative of the monastic life of the period.
S. John was regarded by his monastic contemporaries as a second Moses on Sinai, "for he ascended into the mountain of contemplation, talked with God face to face, and then descended to his fellows in mind and intelligence, bearing the tables of God's Law, his Ladder of Perfection."
Once, when S. John was entertaining six hundred pilgrims, a stranger, habited in linen, after the ancient Jewish fashion, appeared among the attendants, a man of very ancient and reverend mien, and ministered with his own hands to the guests. The feast being over, the stranger vanished, and S. John concluded it must have been Moses who had re-visited Sinai for a brief moment. This is a curious instance of the very widely diffused belief in the Wandering Jew. Hebrew legends are full of similar tales, but the mysterious stranger is with them Elijah; and the Arabs tell of a similar undying man, who appears at intervals, but who is El Khoudir, the friend and instructor of Moses.
When S. John was dying in his hermitage, his spiritual son, George, besought him to suffer him to depart with him. The saint replied, "Thou shalt follow me in a year's time." And so it was, at the end of a twelvemonth the disciple joined his master.
