Believers are often exhorted to wake up in Scripture. Spiritual lethargy is a killer sin that can undermine life with God. Paul writes to Christians in Rome, “The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber” (Rom. 13.1). Paul writes comparable words to the church in Thessalonica, “Let us not be like those who are asleep but let us be alert” (1 Thess. 5.6).
Jesus took three disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray, entreating them with the words, “Stay here and keep watch with me” (Mt. 26.38). After spending alone time with God, Jesus returned to find his disciples fast asleep. “Could you not keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked, “Watch and pray that you do not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mt. 26.41). When Jesus returned to find his disciples sleeping a third time, he said with biting irony, “Sleep now and take your rest” (Mt. 26.45). His sleeping disciples had just missed a golden opportunity to ready themselves for their coming trial by fire.
The daily practice of prayer is one vital way for believers to stay awake to God. John Wesley prayed in his 1732 poem “Spiritual Slumber” for God to “chase this dead slumber from my soul…make me that I sleep no more.”
Today’s Advent prayer for watchfulness was part of an early eighth century liturgy called the Gelasian Sacramentary. Sacramentary is a word connected to a liturgy that includes the sacrament of holy communion, and Gelasian is a reference to a fifth century pope named Gelasius. The attribution to Pope Gelasius I has subsequently been refuted, although some of its prayers may have originated with him. An original copy of this liturgy, complete with elaborate illustrations, is archived at the Vatican and serves as an antecedent to the liturgy Catholics use today in worship. As we prepare for Christ’s coming in Advent, we ask God to awaken us to His presence and work in the world: