BE WATCHFUL AND ALERT

“Be watchful! Be alert!” How many times have you heard these words? The first time I heard them I was a center fielder in little league. They are posted along the Atlantic City Expressway to wake up sleepy drivers. After 9/11 we saw signs with this message in transportation centers. If you were in the army, you may have heard these words from a drill sergeant. Maybe you used them to warn your college student as she was leaving for spring break. Public service announcements about Covid use similar language. “Be watchful! Be alert!”

The words are good advice in many circumstances. They are always good advice for our relationship with the Lord. The Church presents them to us this weekend in the Gospel, as we begin the season of Advent. Jesus says to his disciples, “Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come…What I say to you, I say to all: ‘Watch!’” The Prefaces of Advent, addressed to the Father, ask that “we who watch for that day may inherit the great promise” and “that he may find us watchful in prayer.” We are to watch for the coming of the Lord “with the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ with righteous deeds at his coming,” as we pray today in the Collect.

Watching for the Lord does not mean sitting down and looking anxiously up at the sky. It means being about the business of the kingdom of God. We are watchful when we minister to the needs of Jesus in the poor, when we diligently invest the talents which the Master has entrusted to us, and when we build up a reserve of oil – good works – for our lamps, as we heard in the Gospels in these last three Sundays. Watchfulness has nothing to do with trying to figure out when Jesus will return. That would be a waste of time, taking away from the little time we have on earth to do good. For Jesus said to his disciples, “You do not know when the time will come.”

We do not need visionaries or apparitions to tell us that the end is near. The Gospels already do that. They give us all the warning that we need. So do the epistles of Saints Paul and Peter. “I tell you, brothers, the time is running out. From now on, let those having wives act as not having them, those weeping as not weeping, those rejoicing as not rejoicing, those buying as not owning, those using the world as not using it fully. For the world in its present form is passing away” (1 Cor 7:29-31). Paul tells us not to be idle and gaze at the sky, but rather to go about the ordinary activities of life differently from those who are not waiting for the Lord and are completely immersed in this world, unconcerned for their salvation.

Both Peter and Paul refer to the “day of the Lord” as coming upon the world like a thief, at an unexpected hour. For this reason, they urge vigilance, which is reflected in living a holy life, not in trying to anticipate its date and hour. “Since everything is to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be, conducting yourselves in holiness and devotion, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved in flames and the elements melted by fire” (2 Pet 3:10). These things are not said to scare believers, but rather to motivate them to live in expectation of Christ’s coming by devoting themselves to God and the works that please Him. “Therefore, beloved, since you await these things, be eager to be found without spot or blemish before him, at peace” (2 Pet 3:14). Rather than becoming anxious about the Second Coming, let us wait in joyful anticipation, and be at peace, which is the fruit of persevering faith, prayer and good works.

FATHER SCOTT