In Luke 21:34, having foretold the fearsome events of His Second Coming, the Lord underlines a serious danger, that of our hearts “being weighed down”. And our hearts are “weighed down” by many and different causes. What can redeem them from that disastrous evil? Christ’s commendation: “Take heed to yourselves”, the attention, that is, the watchfulness which the Lord stresses in other words further down: “Watch therefore at all times praying … “(15).
“At all times”. The mind and heart must keep their vigilant guard every moment and every hour, day and night. And especially “praying”. He links watchfulness and prayer.
The Lord shows us the same connection and the same unity of watchfulness and prayer on the night of His betrayal, when during those agonizing moments at Gethsemane after His stirring prayer, soaked in sweat and blood, He found His disciples sleeping, “Keep awake and pray”, He told them, “that you may not enter into temptation”(16). In other words, wakefulness means watchfulness and “to wake” is “to watch”.
“To this day the agony of Gethsemane hosts sleeping Christians with bitterness”, writes Professor J. Komarakis. “Still today their role is one of compunction and wakefulness during the most crucial hour, the eleventh hour of Jesus’ agony. It is to these sleeping Christians, that is, to us, that His piercing question is addressed: “Could you not watch with Me one hour?”(17).
“What a pity! The thought and gaze of Jesus of Gethsemane can find rest only in neptic lives … The technological Christian sleeps through the existential agony of his time, bringing him defenseless to the twelfth hour of the Judgement!…”
All the strategy of mental and unseen warfare is condensed within this phrase of the Lord: “Watch and pray, that you enter not into temptation”.
The apostle Paul, among others, in I Thessalonians 5:1-8, writes about the sudden day of Christ’s coming as resembling a thief in the night, with Christians being “the sons of light and the sons of the day”, and concludes: ”’So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation “.
In that apostolic excerpt we can observe three noteworthy characteristics: Our mind and in general our entire inner man watches when he is awake, when he lives in the light of day, which is the life of Christ.
Night is for sleeping and drunkards. Lack of watchfulness brings sleep and the “weighing down” of the heart, and drunkenness, which comes from worldly cares, filthy thoughts and passions.
Watchfulness further dresses the fighter with the armour of the Spirit, without which he is doomed in the mental unseen warfare.
The apostle Paul, giving his fatherly and apostolic heritage to his disciple Timothy in II Timothy 4:5, tells him among other things: “… As for you, watch in all things”.
In the first Catholic Epistle of Peter 1:13, we read a passage with unique and rare reference to the work of watchfulness: “Therefore gird up your minds, be sober, set your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ”. All of the holy Fathers agree that watchfulness and mental prayer bestow the Grace of the Holy Spirit and give to the soul the revelation of Christ, Who, without prayer and watchfulness, remains hidden …
In 4:7 of the same Epistle the Apostle again entreats and exhorts Christians: “Be therefore sober and watch unto prayer”.
Surely, all the Apostles knew the value of watchfulness but experienced it negatively, having fallen into the temptation of the scandal and abandonment of the Teacher. But it seems the apostle Peter experienced it more than the others; he, who in spite of all his enthusiasm and promises, succumbed to the temptation of denial.
If the apostle Peter had greater watchfulness, attention, and prayer, perhaps he would not have denied the Lord in those tragic moments of his dilemma in the high priest’s courtyard. Watchfulness and prayer would have dispersed his cowardice, given him the courage of confession, and strengthened his love toward the Lord. Temptation found the heart unguarded: it appeared, invaded, imprisoned the consent, and conquered him. Fortunately not for long, permanently, or decisively. The inner world of his soul alerted him: he awakened, regained his watchful armour, and Peter “went out and wept bitterly”.
Because of this painful experience, he stresses watchfulness and its beneficial results three times in only one of his Catholic epistles, the first one.
In I Peter 5:8 he gives us a very expressive, vivid picture of the enemy of souls, the devil. He compares him to a wild lion that roars, that prowls, looking to the right and to the left, seeking someone to devour. Full of hatred, envy, and malice. Tireless, very cunning, ingenious, soul destroying. In this description the devil appears as a never-sleeping beast, a sly spirit full of watchfulness for internal action and destruction! His indefatigable work is filth, confusion, the scattering and grazing of the mind and heart to things base and servile, the thwarting of the blissful union of the soul with its Life and Light.
In this unceasing, persisting, and endless hunt of the devil, the inspired word of God through the Apostle’s mouth tells us: “Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour”.
~ Watchfulness and Prayer, Themes from the Philokalia, Number 1, 2nd Edition, Publications of the Holy Monastery of St Gregory Palamas, Koufalia, Thessaloniki, Hellas
15. Lk. 21:36.
16. Mt. 26:41.
17. Mt. 26:40.
