We said that watchfulness and vigilance in thoughts, in feelings, and in our heart is the work of all Christians, and Holy Scripture itself has become the first source of inspiration and valuation of watchfulness. And Holy Scripture does not address monastics only. It addresses all Christians. If watchfulness be the lot of the monastics- ascetics because of the conditions of the physical and spiritual environment in which they live, it is equally true that the faithful, within their capabilities, cannot be left without their share in regard to a watchful life and its gifts, because a watchful life is nothing more than a life of incessant struggle, a life of contrition and joyful sadness, a life of wrestling with passions and purification, love and theosis.
Numerous are the passages which tell us about watchfulness, thus securing it scripturally. We shall refer to a few selectively.
There is a passage in the Old Testament which is a true neptic treasure: “Take heed to thyself that there be not a secret thing in thine heart, an iniquity…”. Attention to yourself, fathoming inside the abyss of your heart to the extreme limits of your conscious or unconscious personality is the manifestation, practice and dimension of
watchfulness: “Take heed to thyself…”.
In Proverbs 4:23 the divinely inspired author writes: “Keep your heart with all vigilance”.
In the 25th chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew, the Lord narrates the very delightful but also painful parable of the ten virgins. Who really doubts that parable as being one of watchfulness, spiritual wakening and ever readiness of the bride-soul? Could it be that with this story Christ wanted to stress to us the readiness of the mind, the uninterrupted and awakening of the heart; that is, its watchfulness inside the frightful night of passions and the quick darkness of the world outside of and within us? Could it be that Christ, the Divine Bridegroom, wanted to characterize the guarding of watchfulness as true wisdom and its loss as foolishness?
The five wise Virgins had oil in their lamps, the oil of love, and they had light, the light of watchfulness and prayer. The five foolish ones had neither one nor the other. For indeed love and watchful prayer are united together and compose a worthy preparation for the Bride – groom. Indeed, without ardent, spontaneous, existential love with “all one’s soul, heart and strength”, without perect love towards Christ and towards one’s neighbor/ brother, one cannot have the light of watchfulness and prayer. Yet without that light you do not know where you are, where you are walking, where you are heading. You cannot event see your own sell, nor your brother, nor the demons, hot even the Bridegroom Himself. Who is comes “to the marriage feast”. When love lessens, watchfulness and prayer are extinguished. Still without watchfulness and prayer you cannot always keep your lamp filled with the oil of love.
Behold the sweetest end of the work of watchfulness and love: “The Bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with Him to the marriage feast”. And the
awful end of negligence: “Afterward the other virgins came also saying, “Lord. Lord. Is open to us”, bur He replied, “Truly I say to you, I do not know you”.
Let us hear the analysis that St. Mark the Ascetic makes for us on this in the Philokalia: “…The foolish virgins did indeed preserve their outer virginity, yet in spite of this were not admitted to the marriage-feast; they also had some oil in their vessels, that is, they possessed some virtues and external achievements and some gifts of grace, so that their lamps remained alight for a certain time. But because of negligence, ignorance and laziness they were not provident, and did not pay careful attention to the hidden swarm of passions energized within them by the evil spirits. Their thoughts were corrupted by… this demonic activity and shared in it. They were secretly enticed and overcome by malicious envy, by jealousy that hates everything good by strife, quarrelling, hatred, anger, bitterness, rancour, hypocrisy, wrath, pride, self-esteem, love of popularity, self-satisfaction, avarice, listlessness, by sensual desire which provokes images of self-indulgence, by unbelief irreverence, cowardice, dejection, contentiousness, sluggishness, sleep, presumption, self-justification, pomposity, boastfulness, insatiateness, profligacy, greed and by despair which is the most dangerous of all… “
“Thus they were deprived of the joy of the Bride-groom and shut out from the eavenly bridal chamber. Pondering, assessing and testing all this, let us realize our situation and correct our way of life… Therefore, my son, he who wishes to take up the cross and follow Christ must first acquire spiritual knowledge and understanding through constantly examining his thoughts, showing the utmost concern for his salvation, and seeking God with all his strength… so that he does not travel in the dark without light, not knowing how or where to walk”.
The conclusion of the parable is nothing more than a commendation of the Lord for watchfulne sand wakefulness, “Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man comes”.
In Mark 13:33, with the same thought in mind, He says: “Take heed, watch and pray”. What impresses one is the first one, which in the Greek not only means “take heed”, but also “look”. Rightfully, then, did the holy Fathers name watchfulness the vision and the eye of the soul.
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…”.
“At all times” The mind and heart must keep their vigilant guard every moment and every hour, day and night. And especially is “praying”. He is 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”. 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. Kornarakis. “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?”
“What a pity! The thought and gaze of Jesus of Geth semane 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, is 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, is 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”
We could say that the Lord’s entire Sermon on the Mount is a neptic homily where our Theanthropic Saviour pinpoints for us the root of the passions, but at the same time He plants the root of the true spiritual life. This is where the work of watchfulness is to be found: where the finest pulsations of the heart are, the beats which move and direct everything: thoughts, words, memories, feelings, actions, and deeds.
Here is an example: Both purity and adultery start from the heart. There is spiritual adultery and carnal adultery, and the first may exist without the second. The Lord wants to cleanse our hearts from every passionate moment (desire) which brings adultery to the heart. “I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart”.
We see that the Lord characterizes the heart as the source, root, mother and beginning of all carnal and spiritual fruit, as much in the Sermon on the Mount as in His teaching generally.
“If your eye be single, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye be evil, your whole body will be full of darkness “, Let us see how St. Gregory Palamas speaks about the root of the passions and purification: Although passions exist in children by nature- even before their intellect becomes impassioned-they do not cooperate with them in the commission of a sin but for the formation of their nature. That is why they are not wicked. Therefore, since carnal passions get their start from an impassioned intellect, we must start the therapy from there. As in a fire, he who volunteers to put it out, if he cuts the flame from on high, has not succeeded in anything. If, however, he removes the matter of the fire, the fire goes out at once. This happens with carnal passions also.
“If you do not dry out the source of thoughts with prayer and humility and arm yourself against them solely with fasting and physical hardship, you labour in vain. If, however, you sanctify the root with humility and prayer, as we said, you will also have sanctified the external senses”.
Filthy heart, filthy flesh. Clean heart, clean flesh. Impassioned heart impassioned body. Dispassionate heart dispassionate body… “Hypocrites!!” for you cleanse the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of extortion and rapacity. You blind Pharisee! First cleanse the inside of the cup and of the plate, that the outside also may be clean”. This is the cleanliness the Lord wants.
The heart is a workshop, a noiseless and silent workshop where its fruits have immeasurable strength, “‘nuclear” energy: either demonic and destructive or redemptive and divine.
“What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles (pollutes) a man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile (polIute) a man”.
Behold, then, the unrivaled service of watchfulness, the regulation of the workshop of the heart with the kinetic energy of Grace and the Name of Jesus. With watchfulness and the Jesus prayer, with neptic prayer, the heart accepts Grace like oxygen, expelling everything impassionate and making our lives exude grace.
By Archim. Ioannikios Kotsonis
Publications of the holy Monastery of St Gregory Palamas
Koufalia – Thessaloniki
Hellas 1998
