The great penitential Canon of St. Andrew of Crete conceals within it great neptic wealth. Let’s bring to mind some of its precious gems:
Instead of the visible Eve, I have the Eve of the mind: the passionate thought in my flesh, showing me what seems sweet; yet whenever I taste from it, I find it bitter (34).
Thou hast heard O – my soul, be watchful! – how Ishmael was driven out as the child of a bondwoman. Take heed, lest the same thing happen to thee because of thy lust (35).
Awake, my soul, consider the actions which thou hast done; set them before thine eyes, and let the drops of thy tears fall. With boldness tell Christ of thy deeds and thoughts, and so be justified (36).
Be watchful, O my soul, be full of courage like Jacob the great Patriarch, that thou mayest acquire action with knowledge, and be named “Israel”, “the mind that sees God;” so shalt thou reach by contemplation the innermost darkness, and gain great profit (37).
Rise up and make war against the passions of the flesh, as Joshua against Amalek, ever gaining the victory over the Gibeonites, thy deceitful thoughts (38).
Christ was being tempted; the devil tempted Him, showing Him the stones that they might be made bread. He led Him up into a mountain, to see in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. O my soul, look with fear on what happened; watch and pray every hour to God (39).
Compunction and watchfulness are united. Whenever there is compunction there is watchfulness also, and whenever the latter is cultivated, the former also blossoms. The watchful soul, the soul that is full of compunction and humility, the soul that “prays to God at all times”, unceasingly, becomes “a mind that sees God”.
It’s worthwhile still to cite the sticheron of Wednesday before Palm Sunday, which is a rare neptic painting:
Rich in passions, dressed in the deceptive attire of hypocrisy, I delight in the evils of debauchery and immeasurable cruelty by overlooking my intellect, lying like another Lazarus before the gate of repentance, starving from lack of anything good and ailing because of inattentiveness. But do Thou, O Lord, make me a Lazarus poor in sins, lest I ever fail to obtain the finger that will cool my tongue suffering in the unquenchable fire; but encamp me in the bosom of the Patriarch Abraham, for Thou lovest Mankind.
Many times the agony and the fighting spirit of the watchful fighter become a cry, a sign of alert, a dynamic reveille because “the end draws near”. The kontakion of the Great Canon renders in a most eloquent way the intensity of the neptic being in the watchful sentry of the intellect and heart:
My soul, O my soul, rise up! Why art thou sleeping? The end draws near, and soon thou shalt be troubled. Watch, then, that Christ thy God may spare thee, for He is everywhere present and fills all things (40).
~ Watchfulness and Prayer, Themes from the Philokalia, Number 1, 2nd Edition, Publications of the Holy Monastery of St Gregory Palamas, Koufalia, Thessaloniki, Hellas
34. From the 1st Canticle.
35. From the 3rd Canticle.
36. From the 4th Canticle.
37. From the 4th Canticle.
38. From the 6th Canticle.
39. From the 9th Canticle.
40. Great canon, Kontakion. Tone 6.
