(Part 11) The Lenten Prayer of St Ephraim is the ‘Step Stool’ of ‘Ladder of Divine Ascent’ for the Rest of Us

 “For blessed Thou, unto the ages of‑the ages. Amen”

This is the voice of doxology that pervades the whole Ladder and especially its beginning and end.

• Step 1 (Renunciation of the world): opens with praise of “Our God and King” who is “good, ultra‑good and all‑good,” framing the entire ascent as response to God’s universal, eternal goodness.

• Step 26 (Discernment): repeatedly insists that every good gift and every spiritual insight is from God, not from us, which is the inner attitude of doxology.

• Step 30 (Faith, hope, and love): the final step where love never ceases and “adds glory to glory and knowledge to knowledge” without limit, explicitly teaching that there is no end to growth in love and glorification of God—an experiential unpacking of “unto the ages of ages.”

So this closing doxology of the prayer can be pointed to Step 1 for beginning in praise, Step 26 for seeing all as God’s gift, and Step 30 for eternal, unending glorification of God.

The concluding doxology—“For blessed Thou, unto the ages of ages. Amen”—reveals that the entire spiritual life begins, proceeds, and ends in the glorification of God, not in self-achievement but in grateful participation in His eternal goodness. In The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Saint John Climacus frames this doxological vision from start to finish: Step 1 opens the ascent with praise of God as “good, ultra-good, and all-good,” establishing that every struggle is a response to divine grace; Step 26 teaches that all discernment and virtue come from God alone, cultivating a continual attitude of thanksgiving; and Step 30 culminates in the boundless growth of faith, hope, and especially love, where the soul eternally advances “from glory to glory” without end. Thus, the final words of the prayer are not a mere conclusion, but a revelation of the goal itself—that the life of repentance blossoms into unceasing praise, and that communion with God is an endless ascent into His glory, “unto the ages of ages.”