Watching

 

“Most of us have a general idea what is meant by believing, fearing, loving, and obeying; but perhaps we do not contemplate or apprehend what is meant by watching. True Christians, whoever they are, watch, and inconsistent Christians do not. Now what is watching?” 

- St. John Henry Newman, “Watching,” from Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. IV, no. 22 (1838)
 

The Christian “way” however, is not first something moral or ethical, although it is both. Neither is it something fundamentally ethnic or cultural (“socially constructed”) even as it is always embedded in ethnicities and expressed in cultures. The real “tradition” of Christianity is incomprehensible without what we might call a particular “intentional state” that exists within the free, personal, human self-consciousness of those who are “followers of The Way”—Christians are aware of something, and are getting about the task of something. It is our dedication to getting about our task that constitutes the Christian witness, and the task of being a Christian is to watch for Christ.

 

Personal Intentionality

Intentionality is a notion that arises in Aristotle and has been given shape by Catholic philosophy over the centuries. The concept of intentionality plays a major role in 20^th c. philosophical movements, especially “phenomenology” (the study of the structure of appearance to human consciousness). Put simply, as the philosophers see it, human intentionality is the power of conceiving ideas in the mind which represent not only external “things” of the world but also our desires and goals with respect to them, desires and goals which constitute the direction and purpose of human actions and therefore the meaning we require in order to set before ourselves the task of living our lives. Because human persons are irreducibly social and therefore live in community, human intentionality is never simply divorced from the community and the social, but is conditioned by our common life with other persons (society) as well as by the individual consciousness and will.

The social intentionality of human persons is such that we have not merely material goals for our lives, but also spiritual goals: we seek to receive and give love, to have interpersonal communion, friendship. Without friendship, without love, I know that I will never fully realize the meaning of my life, no matter what temporal success I might otherwise have. 

 

 

The Anxiety of the Lover

In my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, and found him not.

I will rise, and will go about the city: in the streets and the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, and I found him not.

The watchmen who keep the city, found me: Have you seen him, whom my soul loveth? (Song of Songs 3:1-3)
 

   The Christian state of life is that of watching for the arrival of the beloved. The friend is the one whose presence we desire. For St. John Henry Newman it is the “true and consistent” character of the Christian that he watches for the coming of Christ. Newman asks us to consider what it means to “watch” and he connects what we have called here an “intention” with a sensibility, a feeling , peculiar to this special sort of intentionality he calls “watching.”
 

“Do you know the feeling in matters of this life, of expecting a friend, expecting him to come, and he delays? Do you know what it is to be in unpleasant company, and to wish for the time to pass away, and the hour strike when you may be at liberty? Do you know what it is to be in anxiety lest something should happen which may happen or may not, or to be in suspense about some important event, which makes your heart beat when you are reminded of it, and of which you think the first thing in the morning? Do you know what it is to have a friend in a distant country, to expect news of him, and to wonder from day to day what he is now doing, and whether he is well? Do you know what it is so to live upon a person who is present with you, that your eyes follow his, that you read his soul, that you see all its changes in his countenance, that you anticipate his wishes, that you smile in his smile, and are sad in his sadness, and are downcast when he is vexed, and rejoice in his successes? To watch for Christ is a feeling such as all these; as far as feelings of this world are fit to shadow out those of another.”
 

Far be it from Newman to reduce Christianity to a “feeling.” He is simply trying to show us that we already experience this anxious state of “watching” which is crucial for the “consistent” practice of Christianity. Watchfulness is the state of consciousness, the intentionality, of which the practice of Christianity is both sign and cause. The Watcher is not on peace terms with the world as it is, nor with his life as it is merely given to him, precisely because in this present dispensation the beloved is not given as presence (parousia), but rather as absence. Hence, Christianity is a desiring, and the Christian’s life in this world is a path, not an arrival. As a Christian I exercise my presence in this world as one on the lookout for the advent of another. The one who loves is not spiritually self-contained, but rather has her eyes open for Christ’s incursion, “as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master” (Ps 123:2).

When I pray the Mass or make Confession, or say my prayers at first and last waking, or serve someone in need, or exact some sacrifice from myself in the effort to avoid sin, or perform some penance for my sins or for those of another, or contemplate the beauty, truth, and goodness in a work of art or literature, I am certainly not just “following a rule” but neither am I simply “making myself at home.” Rather I am exercising the intentional habit of watching for Christ and allowing the Holy Spirit to fan into flame the ember of desire in my heart for the return of the one “whom my soul loveth.” The “peace” of the Christian is not that of one who is “settled down” but of one who is on the move in a definite direction. Christian peace is contentedness in the anxiety of attention upon the advent of the beloved.

 

The Christian as Practical Atheist

I can reduce myself to a sort of sub-Christian existence by refusing to cultivate the intentional state of the Christian. Christ is the one who has made God a friend to me, and it is within the divine friendship offered by Christ that all true human friendship has its origin and ultimate realization. I am a person and thus made for society. But as a Christian, the society to which I truly belong—the company I should be most intent upon keeping—is the company of the seekers for Christ who are my fellow travellers along The Way. The Church is the “Body of Christ,” the society of those who remind one another of their fidelity to Christ. In refusing to see the society of the Church as the object of my first allegiance I isolate myself from the body of faith, disowning my truest friends and transferring my allegiance to the world. Such Christians, says Newman,
 

“…look on the present world as if it were the eternal, not a mere temporary, scene of their duties and privileges, and never contemplate the prospect of being separated from it. It is not that they forget God, or do not live by principle, or forget that the goods of this world are His gift; but they love them for their own sake more than for the sake of the Giver, and reckon on their remaining, as if they had that permanence which their duties and religious privileges have. They do not understand that they are called to be strangers and pilgrims upon the earth, and that their worldly lot and worldly goods are a sort of accident of their existence, and that they really have no property, though human law guarantees property to them. Accordingly, they set their heart upon their goods, be they great or little, not without a sense of religion the while, but still idolatrously. This is their fault,—an identifying God with this world, and therefore an idolatry towards this world; and so they are rid of the trouble of looking out for their God, for they think they have found Him in the goods of this world.” 
 

The Christian has a stark choice with respect to this present world, which is either for him an icon of the infinite or an idol, either the sign of the Creator or a god that “cannot save” (Isa 45:20).

The practical atheist may well have claim to the title “good Catholic,” which can still be socially desirable in our time despite the tarnishing of the Church’s public reputation. Yet Christ is for him little more than a mascot and “being Christian” a term that he writes, as it were, under the portrait-print of a life lived utterly within the “immanent frame” as Charles Taylor puts it, as if there is nothing else but the present age. The immanently-framed Christian does not live in this world as a traveller. He lacks, in Newman’s words, that “tender and sensitive heart which hangs on the thought of Christ, and lives in His love.” Because this heart for Christ is lacking, the inconsistent Christian does not desire the fraternity of fellow travellers but rather those who merely agree with him politically or who can facilitate his rise in the world-system or at least make him more at ease in the secular age.

To the extent I’m not living in the anxiety of the desire for Christ I can’t be a cause of the growth of that desire in others. Spiritual seekers will not search out my counsel; the broken will not trust me with intimate matters of the heart; the morally wayward will not be inspired by my example to live a life more set apart for God. At best I can be a fountain of therapeutic advice, at worst, of cynical wisdom. Of me it might be said at best what Ebenezer Scrooge could muster up in his own favor and that of his associate, Jacob Marley, that they were “good men of business.” The idol-worshiping Christian may attract that highest of all worldly praise, that she is “socially conscious.” Being socially conscious and a good person of business a faithful Christian will be. But these do not make one Christian and neither are they the preeminent sign or fruit of Christian faith. It was the chief defect of the Puritan movement that it made material prosperity the sign of divine election. It is the chief defect of Marxism that it equates revolutionary consciousness with moral goodness. A Christian who finds himself in either of these errors has great cause for spiritual self-concern. He should hear Christ say to him
 

Woe to you that are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you that are full now, for you shall hunger. Woe to you that laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Woe to you, when all men speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets (Luke 26:24-26).
 

Watching and Hoping Makes the Beloved Present-in-Absence

A good friend pointed out to me, in discussing Newman’s sermon, that the Saint’s notion of watching is a comment on the meaning of Christian hope. Watching, like hoping, is about the future, about that which we desire but have not yet attained. The one who hopes for the arrival of the beloved watches for him. Despair is the death of love’s vigilance, hopelessness the very form of the loveless heart. The parables read to us in the days leading up to Advent are about the vigilance of the friends of Christ: the wise and foolish virgins in the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids, the faithful and imprudent stewards in the Parable of the Talents, the sheep and the goats in the Parable of the Judgment of the Nations (Matthew 25). And then comes the ominous warning in the Gospel of Mark (13:33-37) from this year’s First Sunday of Advent:

Jesus said to his disciples:
“Be watchful! Be alert!
You do not know when the time will come.
It is like a man traveling abroad.
He leaves home and places his servants in charge,
each with his own work,
and orders the gatekeeper to be on the watch.
Watch, therefore;
you do not know when the Lord of the house is coming,
whether in the evening, or at midnight,
or at cockcrow, or in the morning.
May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping.
What I say to you, I say to all: ‘Watch!’”

As the object of my desire is in some sense made present in my desiring it, so is the Advent of Christ already made present in my watching for it. The Advent of Christ will one day come in its fullness. But until then we have the Christian life, the life of the Church Militant, whose heart loves and so fights for the spiritual attention necessary to remain vigilant, to stand guard, to be on watch. Newman exhorts us:

 

“Year passes after year silently; Christ’s coming is ever nearer than it was. O that, as He comes nearer earth, we may approach nearer heaven!”

I will consider my little piece to have succeeded if you, the reader, go to read and contemplate St. John Henry Newman’s sermon, “Watching”.
 

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Fr. Byron S. Hagan is the Parochial Vicar of Holy Cross Catholic Church in Northeast Minneapolis. He is a frequent contributor to MSPCatholic.