As well as the importance of fasting accompanied by prayer, the Great Canon stresses the importance of vigils. Jesus himself liked to pray at night, in solitude. “Watch and pray,” he said to his disciples (Mt 26.41). From the beginnings of Christianity, Christians have held vigils, whether together in the services that precede the Divine Liturgy, or alone as part of their personal asceticism. “Watch, therefore,” says Jesus, “for you do not know when the master of the house is coming—in the evening, at midnight, at cockcrow, or in the morning—lest, coming suddenly, he find you sleeping. And what I say to you, I say to all: Watch!” (Mk 13.35–37). Vigils, then, are a time of waiting for the Bridegroom, according to the image used in the parable of the Ten Virgins that the Great Canon alludes to on several occasions and that will come to the fore with such power at the beginning of Holy Week in the Service of the Bridegroom:
“Behold the Bridegroom comes in the middle of the night; and blessed is the servant whom he shall find watching. But unworthy is he whom he shall find in slothfulness. Beware, then, O my soul, and be not overcome by sleep, lest thou be given over to death and shut out from the Kingdom. But return to soberness and cry aloud: Holy, holy, holy art thou, O God: through the prayers of the Mother of God have mercy on us.”
Sleep symbolizes a state of spiritual insensitivity, a lack of awareness, “forgetfulness.” Vigils, with their state of watchfulness, awaken us to the One “who is and who was and who is to come” (Rev 1.8). In a concrete, experiential sense, vigils bear witness to the fact that time, however heavy and mysterious it may be, is from now on porous to eternity. At the heart of darkness, they actualize the light of Pascha. Vigils are thus signs of a paschal attitude and are thereby eschatological. They anticipate here and now the light of the Eighth Day that is already present in the Eucharist. By means of them “the morning star rises in [our] hearts” (2 Pet 1.19).
In Semitic languages angels are called “watchers.” It is above all monks who are engaged in this angelic task, assuming and consuming in mysterious fashion all the spiritual sleep of the world. The neptic—from nēpsis, meaning “watchfulness”—practices the “guarding of the heart.” He wards off the night of passions, fantasies, and a quasi-somnambulistic banality so as to allow the Christ-like sun of the heart—the true “midnight sun”—to reach and illumine his conscience.
My soul, O my soul, rise up! Why art thou sleeping? The end draws near, and soon thou shalt be troubled. Watch, then, that Christ thy God may spare thee, for he is everywhere present and fills all things (Kontakion following Ode 6 of the Great Canon).
Song of Tears
Olivier Clement
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