Be Vigilant

Editor’s note: This is part 35  of a series, “The Kingdom of Grace.” Part 34 can be found here. 

The first teacher of prayer is the Lord Jesus Christ. In his instructions on prayer, he often mentions watchfulness or vigilance. For the Lord, watching and praying go together. Though watchfulness or vigilance is an ancient theme, and remains a major theme in the eastern churches, it has become rare to hear much of it in the western Church. So, let us consider some of its wonders.

In the Gospel of Mark, shortly after foretelling his second coming, the Lord gives an instruction on vigilance. Three times the Lord says: Watch! “Take heed, watch!…Watch!… And what I say to you I say to all: Watch!” (Mk. 13:33, 35, 37). Hopefully, you and I get the message. The disciples did not. For one chapter later, in the Garden of Gethsemane, three times the Lord finds them asleep, three times he wakes them up, and three times again he says: “Watch!” At first, he says simply: “stay here and keep watch” (Mk. 14:34). Once he finds them sleeping, he asks: “Could you not watch one hour with me?” (Mk. 14:37). Then he just says bluntly: “watch and pray that you might not enter into temptation” (Mk. 14:38). Watchfulness is related to wakefulness – being on guard against temptation and fully cognizant of God. The Lord sums up his teaching elsewhere in the Gospel of Luke: “But watch at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of man” (Lk. 21:36). Prayer must be united with watchfulness or vigilance, and the vigilance must be ongoing and persistent.

The lesson continues elsewhere in the New Testament. Saint Peter: “Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). Saint Paul: “Pray at all times in the Spirit. To that end, be watchful…” (Eph. 6:18). The Book of Revelation: “Lo, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is he who is awake, keeping his garments that he may not go naked and be seen exposed!” In this beatitude from the Book of Revelation, to be awake stands for being fully cognizant, the garments stand for sanctifying grace, keeping the garments stands for vigilance, going naked stands for mortal sin, and being seen stands for the moment of judgment before the eyes of God. In other words, blessed is he who is fully cognizant and practices vigilance, that he may not fall into mortal sin and be unprepared to stand before God on judgment day.

The message is clear. The gift of sanctifying grace given to us in baptism requires the practice of watchfulness or vigilance. So, too, do all other practices on the pathways of metanoia. Petitionary prayer, lectio divina, and meditation all tend to come undone without vigilance over our interior life. The power of dark thoughts, disordered passions, and distractions is just too great without some effort to remain faithful to prayer. Yet, we cannot make the effort to practice such vigilance without the help of God’s grace. By his grace, though, God helps us to become fully awake, fully cognizant, fully vigilant over our hearts. It is an important grace to ask of God – the grace of persistent vigilance.

Vigilance, in one sense of the term, is the practice of guarding the heart from various dark thoughts, disordered passions, and distractions. The interior life of fallen human beings is always subject to such turmoil. In our previous article On Silence, we mentioned how much we all struggle with inner silence when we sit down to pray. No sooner does one sit down to pray than do alien thoughts and passions intervene. One desert father describes how a monk might struggle to pray because images of a certain irritating fellow monk keep popping to mind during prayer. The same, no doubt, holds for spouses who have irritating in-laws.

Vigilance consists of guarding the heart from all such dark thoughts, disordered passions, and distraction. Guarding the heart, in turn, consists in a certain awareness, opposition, and eradication of them.

Awareness is a simple cognizance of what is going on within us interiorly – the stream of sensations, images, memories, thoughts, impulses, and passionate reactions flowing through our interior life. Such cognizance comes in degrees, but prayer and silence tend to heighten one’s awareness of all such things. Occasionally, I offer groups of young men a short course on the ways of deeper prayer. Early in the program, the young men make a first attempt at silent prayer. Ordinarily, they return afterward with the same observation. They found it impossible to pray because of all the distractions. The flood of imagery and passions was previously present in their hearts, of course, but their cognizance of it was not. Just a few moments of silence, however, awakens them to it. More dramatically, when a young man or woman enters a novitiate, the many hours of daily silence extending for weeks on end sometimes lead to an acute personal crisis. Silence and prayer excavate the soul like nothing else, and novices begin to face themselves for the first time in their life.

Awareness, however, is merely a preparation for opposition. Opposition takes different forms at different points in the spiritual life, but the most basic step consists of learning two things. The first is simply to withhold the consent of our hearts to much of what comes up interiorly. When dark thoughts, disordered passions, and distractions come knocking on the door of our hearts, the simplest response is to say: “I do not consent.” A simple “no” keeps the heart pure even if such things keep bombarding us involuntarily. It is generally best to pay no further heed to them but simply disregard them. The best thing is simply to turn the eyes of the heart elsewhere. Where? To God. The second thing to learn is to ask God for help. There is a reason we begin the divine office with the words: “O God, come to my assistance, O Lord make haste to help me” (Ps. 70:1). According to an ancient tradition among the desert fathers, it is the perfect prayer to say when dark thoughts, disordered passions, and distraction come upon us. In fact, they say it is the perfect prayer for all circumstances. One way or another, the most basic form of opposition we need to guard our hearts is to do what the Lord said. Watch and pray.

The eradication of the various disordered tendencies of our hearts is not a quick or easy matter. The awareness of our inner turmoil, the gentle but firm “no” to all dark thoughts and disordered passions, and the prayer for help go some way toward the purification of our hearts, but Saint John of the Cross teaches that what ultimately eradicates our sinful tendencies are graces of passive purification. More on the grace of purification later in our series.

For now, a more important point is in order. Vigilance in the sense of guarding the heart is really for the sake of vigilance in another and higher sense. Vigilance is not just about looking out for interior disturbances but much more about looking out for God. It is about looking up to the God of all compassion. It is about being on the lookout for Jesus. Jesus is the Good Physician of our souls and bodies. His mercy is the medicine we need. He pours his Spirit into our hearts to cleanse and purify, to illuminate and transfigure, to elevate and unite us with himself in Love. Vigilance in the full sense of the term is the practice of guarding the heart in order to remain on the lookout for God.

In the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of Mark, when the Lord Jesus told his disciples three times to watch, he had just finished telling them of his return. His instruction on vigilance was a preparation of their hearts to receive Him.

Are you on the lookout for Him?