To begin today I will again read the prayer that was used during Holy Week Liturgy on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. It is this:
Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom. But rouse yourself crying: Holy, holy, holy, art Thou, O God. Through Blessed Mary Theotokos, have mercy on us.
Because the Bridegroom comes after slumber and sleep (that is, after death) this prayer provides an image of the Second Coming of Christ. And to reflect upon the Second Coming is to reflect now upon our life from the point of view of having died, and looking back at the way we led our life. It is like an exercise wherein we are asked to write our obituary. I was asked to do this exercise twice during seminary, once for each of my seminaries. Immediately, the question became How do I want people to remember me? (at least in an obituary); what kind of life do I want to have lived? what is most important to me? In our case as Christians, the question becomes: do we want the Bridegroom, when He comes, to find us having lived a life of watching? having lived a life of loving God above all else, and loving God in our neighbor? having lived a life whereby we live and act mercifully, and thus received mercy (“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy”), that is, received the oil of mercy which fills our flasks as we wait for the call of the Bridegroom?
There is a phrase in that prayer that I want to particularly focus on today: “unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless.” I want to reflect on this because this servant does not enter into the marriage feast. It is to this servant that the Bridegroom says, “I do not know you.” Being heedless means, in short, not entering heaven. The way we live our Christian lives matters: one way enters into life everlasting in the Marriage Feast, and one way does not.
Again: “unworthy is the servant whom the Bridegroom shall find heedless.” Heedless is a bit of an old-fashioned sort of word. To be heedless is to pay no attention. It is to be careless, inattentive, and to have no regard. It is the opposite of being watchful, which Our Lord in many places commands His disciples to be. Watch and pray, He said to the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, that you may not enter into temptation. And what is this temptation for us? It refers to many things, but preeminently the temptation to not pray, the temptation to not attend Liturgy, the temptation to not study Holy Scripture, the temptation to make things more important than God (that is, the temptation to idolatry), and the temptation to judge people, which is the opposite of loving God in them, the opposite of being merciful to them in deed and in truth. To be heedless summarizes all of this. To be heedless is to be unloving, both to God and to fellow Christian and to fellow human. Saint John has strong words for the heedless, for he says “If any one has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” The implication being, it does not.
To live godly lives requires we know about God’s love. We Christians have no excuse for not knowing about God’s love. Saint John says of the Bridegroom’s teaching on love, “By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us.” God’s love is sacrificial. Saint Paul says more: “Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” This is the love we are to imitate if we want to enter the Marriage Feast at the end of days.
At the Second Coming at the end of days, Christ will come again as the Bridegroom, at midnight after we have slumbered and slept the sleep of death. The Bridegroom will show Himself in His glory as wounded: nail holes in His hands; a tear in His side, His woundedness permanent in Him. He will come again and show His suffering, for His Passion on the Cross recapitulates all the suffering He endured in Scripture as His people forgot time and again the innumerable benefits given by Him. All the Bridegroom has done is for our salvation: His sacrifice entirely that we might be redeemed, and be gathered by Him our Bridegroom into the Marriage Feast: entirely that we might love Him.
Let us this Easter season be roused to shake off whatever sleep remains in us. We too often are like the foolish virgins wandering aimlessly when the call of the bell to prayer, sacrifice, and all that is merciful is ever-ringing. May we be led by the Holy Spirit with the wise virgins to do ceaseless acts of mercy day in and day out. Let us not remain outside the bridal chamber of Christ, but have our flasks full of oil by keeping our Lord’s commandments, that He abides in us. Let our hearts be given to God, because we so desire to join the angels singing around the heavenly throne, Holy, Holy, Holy! all of us united with the Bridegroom in heavenly matrimony, even the same Jesus Christ, Son of Man and Son of God, Who lives and reigns with the Father Almighty in the unity of the Holy Ghost: ever one God, unto the ages of ages. Amen.
On the Bridegroom Finding Us Heedless