St John Climacus

John was a very smart man and he could have become a very famous teacher, instead he chose to live his life entirely for God. He joined a Monastery on Mount Sinai when he was just 16 years old and then he moved into the dessert and lived there as a hermit for 40 years. At first he found it very difficult to give his whole heart to God, he was tempted to sin and he had to work very hard to stay on the right path. The more he prayed and learned about the Saints, the closer to God he would get. People started to hear about this very holy man in the dessert and they would visit him to ask for his advice. God gave John the very special gift of bringing peace to anyone that was troubled and being tempted to sin. When he turned 74 years old, he became the abbot (the leader) of the monastery in Mount Sinai. He wrote the rules that all the monks had to follow in their life. These rules brought them closer to God, because these were the rules that St. John followed in his own life. The book that he wrote with these rules is called “The Climax of Perfection” and that is where the name Climacus came from – the word Climax