“You also must be ready; for the son of man is coming at an unexpected hour”.
Today’s gospel reading has two themes. The first is giving in celebration of receiving the kingdom and the second is about watchfulness. It is about watchfulness that I wish to speak about.
The greatest weapon the devil uses against each one of us is convincing us that we always have a enough time in our lives to include God. Therefore it is not important to worry about God being in our life today because there is always tomorrow. So when our endeavours bring forth plentifully we think of how can we preserve and indeed multiply the fruits of our endeavours. So we focus upon making more money – concentrating upon securing comfort in our old age. Like the parable of the rich fool that occurs in verses 16 to 21 in the same chapter of Luke we can say to our soul “soul you have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry”. After we have done that we will have time from God. So our focus is on building, on gaining, on accumulating, and on providing for our ease. Unfortunately no one knows the time of our death. No one knows the time, date, or place where we will come before our maker. If our death happens at a time that we had not considered and had not prepared for, then what good are our worldly treasures to us?
Yes, the devil has a powerful weapon in encouraging us to believe that we can enter a relationship with God in our own time and on our own terms. If we recognise the wiles of the devil and his false promises then who would not be vigilant to await the coming of the master?
Watchfulness or nipsis is one of the first and most important virtues of the monastic. It is a state of alert vigilance, freedom from obsession, a sharpened attention, resolute self-control, clarity of thought, and steadiness of judgement. Without watchfulness, the passions deaden the soul making it insensitive to the mysteries of the Holy Spirit. So the soul becomes spiritually blind, deaf, and insensible. We then become dead spiritually because Christ does not live in us and we do not live or act in Christ and the devil wins. Therefore let us be watchful and alert to the tricks of the devil. Let us be ever ready because no one knows when the son of man is coming.