Sunday/Watch

The gospel advises "Watch!" in anticipation of Christ's return.

"Watch" means "stay awake," from Middle English wacchen, Old English wæccan, doublet of wacian to be awake; see "wake."

Wake has two origins, one from "awake," and one meaning "following." (1540-50; < Middle Low German, Dutch wake, or Old Norse vǫk hole in the ice. The sense perhaps evolved via "track made by a vessel through ice." Perhaps the English word is directly from Scandinavian. Figurative phrase in the wake of "following close behind" is recorded from 1806.)

So the Irish "wake" means a vigil, not a period following a life.

In The Song of Jonah, the American Mystic and Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, wrote an epilogue called "Fire Watch." It grew out of Merton's temporary duty as a night watchman charged with spotting any incipient signs of fire in the monastery, documents his revisiting of places that had marked the stages of his formation as a Trappist monk. In it he presented the Watchman as a way of God's creating silence and solitude as a means for introspection and contemplation.

A small part:

The voice of God is heard in Paradise: “What was vile has become precious. What is now precious was never vile. I have always known the vile as precious: for what is vile I know not at all. What was cruel has become merciful. What is now merciful was never cruel. I have always overshadowed Jonas with my mercy and cruelty I know not at all. Have you had sight of Me, Jonas, My child? Mercy within mercy within mercy. I have forgiven the universe without end, because I have never known sin. What was poor has become infinite. What is infinite was never poor. I have always known poverty as infinite: riches I love not at all. Prisons within prisons within prisons. Do not lay up for yourselves ecstasies upon earth, where time and space corrupt, where the minutes break in and steal. No more lay hold on time, Jonas, My son, lest the rivers bear you away. What was fragile has become powerful. I loved what was most frail. I looked upon what was nothing. I touched what was without substance and within what was not I AM."