Watch and Pray
I hear the Savior say,
“Thy strength indeed is small”
Child of weakness, watch and pray
Find in Me thine all in all
C Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.
Lord, now indeed I find
Thy pow’r and Thine alone,
Can change the leper’s spots
And melt the heart of stone.
C
For nothing good have I
Whereby Thy grace to claim;
I’ll wash my garments white
In the blood of Calv’ry’s Lamb.
C
And when, before the throne,
I stand in Him complete,
”Jesus died my soul to save,”
My lips shall still repeat.
C Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.
——
Maundy Thursday is Jesus’ last full day alive. His teaching moments with the disciples become distilled, insistent. This is the day when he gives them the first Eucharist and washes their feet. This is the evening when he leaves them His greatest commandment: that they love one another. On this night, this Passover night, he tells them that He will not drink of the fruit of the vine again until the kingdom of God is fulfilled.
On this night, fed with the holy food of Passover, cleansed by His serving hands, and primed with His insistence that this meal will be His last and this time the crux of God’s work in the present age, the disciples make the ascent behind Him to the garden of Gethsemane.
Gethsemane, where Jesus knelt a stone’s throw away from the disciples and prayed until he bled, for the final cup—the Eucharistic cup of death, which His blood would fill—to pass from him. Gethsemane, where the disciples, overcome by grief, failed to keep watch, and drifted into sleep.
The hymn “Jesus Paid It All” draws its first verse from the Gethsemane narrative: “I hear the Savior say,/ “Thy strength indeed is small;/ Child of weakness, watch and pray,/ Find in Me thine all in all.” This mirrors Christ’s words to His disciples in Matthew 26: “And he said to Peter, ‘So, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.’”
Watch and pray. But we, like the disciples, all sleep.
This Easter season, as we enter into the Triduum of Christ’s suffering, we enjoin one another and ourselves to watch and pray. But how often do we find ourselves instead sleeping—nodding off or thinking of other things in church; wishing we could indulge ourselves in the things prohibited by our Lenten fasts; pursuing distractions in the place of prayer? Christ knows our willing spirits, like Peter’s: “Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away” (Matthew 26:33). But He knows also our weakness. He found his disciples “sleeping for sorrow” (Luke 22:45); he knows the griefs that bear us away into a stupor of apathy or into dreams before a full prayer escapes our lips.
Verses 2 and 4 of “Jesus Paid it All” express the help for our helplessness, as we try and fail again this year to watch with Christ: “For nothing good have I/ Whereby Thy grace to claim;/ I’ll wash my garments white/ In the blood of Calv’ry’s Lamb. … Lord, now indeed I find/Thy pow’r, and Thine alone,/ Can change the leper’s spots/ And melt the heart of stone.”
The cup which Christ saw before him in the garden is poured out for all of us, and in that cup, in that holy and perfect sacrifice, we find the power to wake with Him, the power to follow and obey. That power alone can cleanse us. Let us do our best to resist the weakness of the flesh and watch with willing spirits over these next three days, as our salvation is made complete in Christ’s final hours.