Thursday of the 2nd Week of St. Luke
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In today’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus Christ bequeaths to us His divinely authoritative example of keeping vigil at night in prayer:
And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God. And when it was day, he called unto him his disciples: and of them he chose twelve, whom also he named apostles; Simon (whom he also named Peter), and Andrew his brother, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon called Zelotes, And Judas the brother of James, and Judas Iscariot, which also was the traitor. And he came down with them, and stood in the plain, and the company of his disciples, and a great multitude of people out of all Judaea and Jerusalem, and from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases; And they that were vexed with unclean spirits: and they were healed.
And the whole multitude sought to touch him: for there went virtue out of him, and healed them all. – Luke 6: 12 – 19
Following His all-night vigil, the Lord uses His day profitably, making all-wise decisions in His choice of the great twelve apostles, healing the sick, and exorcising demons. As God, of course He has infinite divine power to perform these actions. But He performs them also as the New Adam, demonstrating to us that His saints, conformed to His likeness, receive this same power to perform the deeds of God. Indeed, in His sublime discourse on the night before He died, Christ tells the disciples that they will perform even greater miracles than He: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father (John 14: 12).” By going unto His Father in the Ascension and sending down the Holy Spirit upon the disciples, the Lord enabled them, and enables the saints of every generation, to multiply indefinitely and innumerably His mighty works upon earth. But in order to do this, they must by grace be conformed to His likeness, through the ascetical, liturgical, and mysteriological life of the Church, animated by the All-Holy Spirit. One key ingredient of this life is keeping vigil at night in prayer.
St. Theophan the Recluse exhorts all of us, including those not living in monasteries, to undertake this God-pleasing labor:
“And He continued all night in prayer to God.” Here is the foundation and beginning of Christian all-night Vigils. Prayerful ardor chases away sleep, and exhilaration of the spirit does not allow one to notice the passing of time. True men of prayer do not notice this; it seems to them that they had just begun to pray, and meanwhile day has already appeared. But until one reaches such perfection, he must take on the labour of vigils. Solitaries have borne this and bear it; cenobitic monastics have borne this and bear it; reverent and God-fearing laypeople have borne this and bear it. But though vigil comes with difficulty, its fruit remains in the soul, directly and constantly present—tranquility of soul and contrition, along with weakening and exhaustion of the body. It is a state very valuable for those who are zealous about prospering in the spirit! That is why in places where vigils are established (as on Mt. Athos), they do not want to give them up. Everyone realizes how difficult it is, but nobody has a desire to rescind this order, for the sake of the profit which the soul receives from vigils. Sleep, more than anything, relaxes and feeds the flesh; vigils, more than anything, humble it. One who has enough sleep is burdened by spiritual deeds and is cold towards them; he who is vigilant is quick in movement, like a gazelle, and burns in the spirit. If the flesh, like a slave, must be taught to be good, there is no better way to succeed in this than through frequent vigils. Here the flesh fully feels the power of the spirit over it, and learns to submit to it; while the spirit acquires the habit of reigning over the flesh. – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, pp. 216 – 217
It comforts us to know that even in our day there are monasteries where the monks or nuns rise long before dawn to chant the Midnight Office and Matins. Realizing what great benefit we derive from their prayers and being grateful for how much they struggle for our sake should motivate us to join them in their struggles, at least in our own little way. Of course, we cannot advance from keeping no vigil at all to keeping long night vigils in prayer, but we can make a start by staying up later or getting up earlier to pray. One could begin by sacrificing one-half hour of one’s sleep, either at the end or the beginning of the day, to keep watch with the Lord. The quiet and dark of the night is exquisitely suited for prayer, and once one has begun to taste the joy of prayer at this time, one is indeed loathe ever to give it up, as St. Theophan says.
Besides voluntary vigils, involuntary vigil forces itself on parents with small children, those who suffer from insomnia, and those whose work calls upon them either to work through the night or to be on call for the needs of others. When we find ourselves in these situations, we can turn our sleeplessness to good use by prayer.
There are at least two ways in which those living today especially benefit from keeping night vigil: Relief from daily confusions and a healthy expectation of the coming of the Lord. Our day is filled with confusion resulting from constant demands and sources of distraction, and this depresses and deadens the soul. The peace and quiet of the night provide a time when we can put aside all the cares of the day and re-focus the soul on the One Thing Needed. Night vigil also forms the soul in a correct understanding of and a vigilant attitude towards the end of one’s life, either at the hour of death or at the Second Coming of Christ. This provides a corrective to two spiritual diseases of our time: Avoidance of the reality of death and God’s judgment, which results in the failure to repent and prepare for death, and the prevalent confusion and agitation about the possible advent of Antichrist and the end of the world. We keep vigil precisely because we consciously await the Lord’s coming in repentance, with understanding, and we hope that by a vigilant life we will inherit the joy of the five wise virgins of the Gospel.
Most of us know the Bridegroom Troparion that we chant at Matins on the first three days of Holy Week. Many, perhaps, do not know that we also recite it every weekday at the Midnight Office. Its sobering words should accompany us throughout the year:
Behold, the Bridegroom cometh in the middle of the night, and blessed is that servant whom He shall find watching; and again unworthy is he whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, lest thou be borne down with sleep, lest thou be given up to death, and be shut out from the Kingdom. But rather rouse thyself and cry: Holy, Holy, Holy art Thou, O our God; through the Theotokos, have mercy on us.
Amen.
