The Ladder or "The Ladder of Divine Ascent" is an ascetic book written for a monastic community by John Climacus around the year 600 AD. It was composed for John, the Abbot of Raithu, which is a monastery situated on the shores of the Red Sea.The work became very popular in the Eastern Orthodox church and remains widely read today, usually during the period of Lent. The work studies the means of ascending to the peak of religious perfection by a sequence of thirty steps, which brin...

For the first time in English, we present Fra. Luis de Granada’s “Libro de la Escala Espiritual”, (1562) of J. Climacus’ “Ladder of Divine Ascent.”What this particular work is and is not.What this work is:This is a translation of the “Libro de la Escala Espiritual”, with the notations and verbiage translated and commented on by Fra. L. de Granada. O.P.. This work is from his initial effort of 1551. According to the late E. Allison Peers, Fra. Luis de Granada had mad...

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.In the austere stillness of Mount Sinai, Saint John Climacus gathered the hard-won wisdom of the desert into a single, searching vision of the spiritual life. The Ladder of Divine Ascent sets before the listener a path of thirty steps, tracing the soul’s passage from renunciation and obedience through repentance, vigilance, and the struggle against the passions, and onward to stillness, prayer, and the fullness of divine love.Ma...

The Philokalia is a collection of texts written between the fourth and the fifteenth centuries by spiritual masters of the Orthodox Christian tradition.First published in Greek in 1782, then translated into Slavonic and later into Russian, The Philokalia has exercised an influence in the recent history of the Orthodox Church far greater than that of any book apart from the Bible. It is concerned with themes of universal importance: how man may develop his...

Saint Isaac the Syrian (613 - 700 AD) was a Christian bishop in the Syrian Church of the East and theologian best remembered for his written works on Christian asceticism. He is regarded as a saint in almost all Orthodox churches.St. Isaac is remembered for his homilies on the interior life, which are favorite among Christian monks. They survive in Syriac manuscripts and in later Greek, Arabic, and Georgian translations.Isaac's writings offer an example of ascetical texts w...

St. John Chrysostom was born in the year 349 AD in Antioch. His father died soon after his birth and he was raised by his deeply pious mother. Under her influence St. John became devout as well, and took to studying scripture under the guidance of the bishop of Antioch who would later be the one to baptize him.St. John was drawn to become a monk, and when he mother died he withdrew to the wilderness. There he wrote a number of works on the ascetic life. After a number of years he w...

These are the words or sayings, of various monks who lived in the deserts of Egypt between 250 A.D. and 400 A.D. They cover topics such as love, poverty, fasting, humility, and prayer. Two books of sayings are included and an appendix of questions between monk disciples and their spiritual fathers.

Athanasius was born in Egypt to a Christian family sometime around 295 AD. He was given a good education by his parents, and in his youth, the local bishop, recognizing his talents, took him on as his aide. As a result he would get the chance to be present at Nicaea for the first Ecumenical council of the church.These works cover the full span of his life, beginning before 319 AD, when he wrote his famous, 'On the Incarnation of the Word'. At the time there were a number of differe...

his is the full set of early Christian writings covering the first 4 centuries after Christ, as edited by Philip Schaff.A total of 64 authors, and over 2,500 works are included in this collection. Everything has been cataloged in an organized fashion to make it easy to reference with the Kindle format.The following authors are included in this collection:Alexander of AlexandriaAlexander of LycopolisAmbroseAphrahatArchelausAristides...

The psychic phenomena of today are symptoms of the emergence of a new spirituality that is molding the world religion of the future—phenomena such as Yoga, Zen, Tantra, Transcendental Meditation, Guru Maharaj-ji, Hare Krishna, UFO’s, the Charismatic Movement, and Jonestown.    “None of these by itself … has a crucial significance in the spiritual makeup of contemporary man; but each one in its own way typifies the striving of men today to find a new spiritual path, d...

Many laypeople have attempted to read the great spiritual classic, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, but have been frustrated in attempting to apply the lessons of this monastic text to their everyday lives in the world. In Thirty Steps, Archimandrite Vassilios interprets the Ladder for the ordinary Christian without sacrificing any of its beauty and power. Now you too can accept the challenge offered by St. John Climacus to ascend closer to God...

This edition of Acquisition on the Holy Spirit comes complete with a Touch-or-Click Table of Contents. Saint Seraphim of Sarov is one of the most renowned Russian monks and mystics in the Orthodox Church. He is generally considered the greatest of the 19th century startsy (elders) and, arguably, the first. He is remembered for extending the monastic teachings of contemplation, theoria and self-denial to the layperson, and taught that the purpose of the Christian life was to acquire the Holy S...