The Quality of Watchfulness: 1st Sunday of Advent, Biblical Background

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Date: November 20, 2025
Liturgical Season: 1st Sundaynof Advent, Year A

Readings:

• First Reading: Isaiah 2:1-5
• Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 122: 1-2, 3-4, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9
• Second Reading: Romans 13:11-14
• Gospel: Matthew 24:37-44

One-Sentence Theme:
Like waiting for your beloved to return from a long journey, you go about your daily work, but your heart is oriented, and the longing keeps you awake.

INTRODUCTION TEXT, which you are welcome to read aloud before the Liturgy of the Word, is placed at the very end of this post.

Historical Landscape

These four readings span nearly a millennium of salvation history, each revealing a different dimension of the movement toward God’s house and the watchfulness required to recognize it.

Isaiah 2 speaks from 8th century BCE Jerusalem, during the divided monarchy when the Assyrian empire looms as an existential threat. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz offers this eschatological vision before the exile, while the temple still stands but the question hangs heavy: will Judah survive? Into this crisis, Isaiah proclaims a future when “all nations shall stream toward” the mountain of the Lord’s house. This is not just spiritual metaphor – it’s embodied movement, physical pilgrimage, nations climbing upward together toward the source of instruction and peace.

Psalm 122 (121), one of the Songs of Ascent sung by pilgrims going up to Jerusalem for the great festivals, likely comes from the post-exilic period. The vision Isaiah prophesied is now liturgical practice – feet actually set within the gates, tribes actually streaming up. The movement is real, communal, joyful: “I rejoiced because they said to me, ‘We will go up to the house of the LORD.'” But notice the shift from Isaiah’s “mountain” and “temple” to the more intimate “house of the LORD” – this is not just worship, but belonging to God’s household, God’s family.

Romans 13 finds us in 57-58 CE. Paul writes from Corinth to a community he hasn’t yet visited, at the height of his theological maturity. Jesus’ death and resurrection are within living memory – perhaps twenty-five years past – and there’s urgent expectation of his imminent return. “The night is advanced, the day is at hand,” Paul writes. Time itself is moving. Salvation is nearer now than when they first believed.

Matthew 24 comes latest, around 80-90 CE, probably from Antioch. The Temple has been destroyed (70 CE). The center of the Jewish world is gone. Matthew’s community is processing that trauma while asking: when will Jesus return? Why the delay? This apocalyptic discourse reflects a community that’s had to settle in for the long haul while maintaining vigilant readiness.

The Story Behind “The Days of Noah”

When Jesus says “as it was in the days of Noah,” his Jewish audience would hear far more than we might assume. They knew the story from Genesis 6, but also from the rich tradition preserved in 1 Enoch and other Second Temple literature. The flood didn’t come randomly – it came because the “Watchers” (the Grigori in Greek, from gregoreō – to be awake, to watch) failed their post.

These were the angels sent to guard and watch over the earth. But they saw the daughters of men and found them beautiful, and their watching became wanting. They descended from their post, took human wives, and from these unions were born the Nephilim – the giants whose violence filled the earth. The guardians who were supposed to protect became entangled in what they were watching. They lost their orientation. They stopped seeing what they were meant to see.

So when Jesus uses that same root word – “stay awake” (gregoreite), “keep watch” – his audience would hear the echo: Don’t be like the Grigori. Don’t let your watchfulness become something else. Don’t get swept away.

Multidimensional Movement

What’s striking about these readings together is the sheer amount of movement happening on different levels, through different dimensions:

Spatial movement: Nations streaming toward the mountain. Tribes going up. Pilgrims climbing. “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, that he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.” Feet set within gates. Physical, embodied, communal ascent.

Temporal movement: “The time has come.” The night advancing, the day at hand. Salvation nearer now than when we first believed. Noah going into the ark – and the flood coming. The Son of Man coming at an hour we do not expect. Time itself is moving, carrying us forward whether we’re ready or not.

Directional movement: Some movements we initiate (come, let us climb). Some movements simply happen (the time has come – as if time itself is a current flowing). Some movements come AT us (flood, burglar, Son of Man). We’re positioned in relation to all these movements, and wisdom is knowing which to join, which to prepare for, which we cannot control.

And in the center of all this movement: peace. “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!” The psalmist doesn’t pray for the movement to stop, but for peace within the movement. Peace becomes what allows right discernment when you’re surrounded by competing currents.

The Progression of Preparation

The readings teach us how to maintain the right quality of watchfulness:

First – Know your direction (Isaiah): Where are you going? To the mountain of the Lord, to the house of God, to walk in the paths of light. You need a direction to have peace. Not necessarily complete clarity, but orientation – like walking the Camino, following the yellow arrows even when you don’t know how far you’ll walk today.

Second – Belong to the household (Psalm): The shift from “temple” to “house” matters. We’re not just worshipers but family, household members. And the prayer of this household is peace – not as absence of conflict but as active prayer, active work, active desire for shalom.

Third – Wake up, put on armor (Romans): The night is ending. Stop hiding in the darkness, doing things under cover. Let yourself be exposed to the light – and put on Christ as armor, not to hide from the light but to face it. Because when light comes, it exposes our inner darkness, and that’s difficult. We need Christ as protection not FROM illumination but FOR receiving it.

Fourth – Stay awake, stay oriented (Matthew): Because you don’t know when. But also because this IS how you live as household, as family waiting for the Beloved’s return.

Three Kinds of Watchfulness

The readings reveal three failures of watching, and point toward a fourth way:

The Grigori’s entanglement: Watching that becomes wanting, wanting that becomes taking. They got pulled off their post by desire, lost their orientation entirely.

The flood-people’s sleepwalking: They had everything they wanted at hand – eating, drinking, marrying – so they stopped expecting anything. No longing, no vigilance. Satiation led to sleep.

The burglar-anxious scanning: Hypervigilance driven by fear. Always scanning, never resting. This isn’t peace either.

But there’s a fourth way: awake, oriented, expectant love. Like waiting for your beloved to return from a long journey – you’re going about your daily work (grinding grain, working the field), but your heart is oriented. You’re listening for footsteps. Not anxiously, not fearfully, but with longing that keeps you alive, awake. Your attention can hold multiple time horizons at once: today’s tasks AND the coming you’re preparing for.

This is the watchfulness Jesus calls us to. The watchman’s job is not to be the whole army, but to see clearly and to call. To ring the bell. To sound the alarm – not in panic, but in alert receptivity. Awake enough to see. Trusting enough to call upon the name of the One who is both our armor and our peace.

Introduction to the Liturgy of the Word

(To be read before the First Reading)

As we begin Advent, the Church does not immediately turn our eyes to Bethlehem and the manger. Instead, today’s readings confront us with urgency and movement – nations streaming toward God’s house, time itself advancing, the day at hand. We hear the ancient call to watchfulness, to stay awake for the coming of the Lord.

But what does it mean to be awake? The readings reveal different qualities of watching: the Watchers in Noah’s day who got entangled in what they were meant to guard, the people before the flood who sleepwalked through their lives, and the faithful watchfulness Jesus calls us to – alert, oriented, waiting with expectant love.

Listen for the movement in these readings. Notice how they teach us to position ourselves rightly in relation to the currents we cannot control, joining the pilgrimage toward God’s house while keeping vigil for the coming we both remember, encounter today, and await in hope.

Curious about the deeper meaning of Advent and why this season begins with such urgency rather than Christmas cheer? Explore the threefold coming of the Lord→

Ready to experience this watchfulness in your own body? Try the Watchman’s Vigil somatic meditation →