Keep Your Eyes Open
One
“They Could Not Keep Their Eyes Open”
It’s the night before Jesus’ big day, the day when He will achieve His life’s work and be tortured to death in the process. And now, in the Garden of Gethsemane, He’s having what we might call a panic attack. He’s asking God if there’s any way He can get out of it. He’s sweating blood. And He’s asked His best friends just to be there with Him. But in this supreme crisis of Jesus’ life, His friends don’t show up.
Here’s how St. Matthew narrates it, “When he returned to his disciples, he found them asleep. He said to Peter, ‘So you could not keep watch with me for one hour? Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ Withdrawing a second time, he prayed again, ‘My Father, if it is not possible that this cup pass without my drinking it, your will be done!’ Then he returned once more and found them asleep, for they could not keep their eyes open. He left them and withdrew again and prayed a third time, saying the same thing again. Then he returned to his disciples and said to them, ‘Are you still sleeping and taking your rest?’”
They let the Lord down, because “They could not keep their eyes open.” They let the Lord down, because “The Spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak.” Are we letting the Lord down for the same reason?
Two
What Makes the Flesh Weak?
Jesus’ best friends let Him down when He needed them most because their flesh was weak. How did their flesh get so weak? And how does our flesh get weak? Simple: we pamper our bodies and indulge our senses. We pamper our bodies when we indulge in the senses of touch and taste. When we become sexually self-indulgent, or when we eat too much or drink too much because we are stressed or bored, or just for pleasure alone. Or when we refuse to force ourselves to do demanding physical tasks – when we allow our bodies simply to sit inert, without exercise or physical service to others.
That, for sure, is pampering the flesh. But a lot of us stay pretty physically healthy, and maybe even pretty sexually chaste, and yet we still make our flesh weak by indulging the senses of hearing and sight. We listen to constant chatter on our devices, constant gossip or news or commentary. And we indulge our sight. Oh, how we indulge our sight! We look at all kinds of things we have no business looking at, and then we wonder why we can’t keep our eyes open in the areas where Jesus is asking us to focus.
Three
Importance of Sight
Sight is the most important of the five senses. Sight is the sense that’s closest to our intellectual understanding, which is why when we want to check if somebody understands us, we say, “Do you see what I’m saying?” Also, the images we get through our eyes are the images that stick with us the longest. Sight is the sense that we primarily use for memory. That’s why most ancient techniques for memorization use visual images. It’s also why it’s so much easier to remember a face than a name. So what comes into our eyes stays there and shapes the way we understand and even feel about things.
Of all our senses, God only gave our eyes lids, as though to give us more control in filtering and being selective about what we see.
Four
The Loss of Spiritual Sight by Overstimulating Physical Sight
In the age of screens, not just in our living rooms, but in our offices, our bedrooms, in our pockets, our eyes are more overstimulated than the eyes of any people in the history of the world. Constant, artificially bright lights. Endlessly moving, shifting scenes, webpage to webpage, video to video, action sequence to action sequence. Images of violence, images of the most bizarre, twisted sexuality, and a steady stream of fantastic CGI battles and imaginary landscapes.
Do you think this is what your eyes are for? To simply be dazzled by what doesn’t, and usually, what shouldn’t exist? Do you know what happens when you devote your eyes to videos and reels and endless streaming? The real world looks boring and bland by comparison. So you’re less equipped to deal with real life, less enthusiastic about the incredible gifts and beauties all around you. And if real life looks bland by comparison, the spiritual world feels totally remote and inaccessible.
When we indulge in visual entertainment, with our eyes wide open, we can almost see the flesh being willing and the spirit being weak. No wonder that when Jesus asks us to pray with Him, it’s the opposite. Our spirit may be willing, but our flesh is weak, and we just can’t seem to keep our eyes open.
Five
Resolution
This whole series has been about the danger of the way we are destroying our attention span and the importance of strengthening it because the ability to give our full attention, focus, and concentration is one of the most important ways to be united to God. If we lose this power, we lose the power to love. And now we can end this whole series with a very practical way to regain our attention.
Go to Mass and practice paying attention from the opening prayer and then step by step with every word, every sign, every gesture. And to help you do that, we are about to begin a seven-part series that explains every part of the Mass. So, go to Sunday Mass or an extra daily Mass with the intention to give God your full attention. Yes, your mind will wander. But you strengthen it every time you catch yourself and just bring it back.
With every escape and return of your attention, your love, and hence your union with God grows stronger!