Let's return to the biblical scene of Christ's last evening with his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane. The disciples were full of good intentions, but Jesus understood their condition. In the light of this knowledge he advised a course of action that would enable them to do what he knew they sincerely wanted to do. "Watch and pray," he said, "that ye enter not into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" (Matt. 24:41).
The plain meaning to this advice to his sleepy and worried friends was that by engaging in a certain type of action – the keeping of vigil combined with prayer – they would be able to attain a level of spiritual responsiveness and power in their lives that would be impossible without it. In this simple but profound episode we find the whole nature and principle of the kind of activity that is a spiritual discipline. Such an activity implants in us, in the embodied personality that is the carrier of our abilities (and disabilities!) a readiness and an ability to interact with God and our surroundings in a way not directly under our control.
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