Order of Watchers has goal prayer
Organisation of the Fraternity
Members
From their foundation, the Watchers have been men and women, pastors and worshippers from the Protestant tradition. Today, while maintaining its Protestant identity, the Fraternity also welcomes Catholic and Orthodox Christians.
Those who wish to become members begin with a period of novitiate, which ends on 31 December of the year following that of affiliation. This time of apprenticeship is spent in a personal relationship with a godfather or godmother. If necessary, it is followed by the status of observer.
The commitment is then reiterated each year; it is formalised by the signing of a membership card, in discernment and personal prayer. The regional meetings at the beginning of the year or the general meeting include the reiteration of the community's principles and the confirmation of commitments.Structure and responsibilities
The Fraternity of Watchers is today mainly represented in French-speaking Europe. It is structured in about ten regions, including Belgium and Switzerland.
The leadership is assumed by a prior, in communion with a council composed of the regional leaders and their deputies. The prior is not elected, but receives a vocation from his predecessor in agreement with the council.
A quarterly bulletin, Veillez, has been published since the origins of the Fraternity and is distributed to all members and to those who request it. It contains articles and testimonies from members of the Fraternity, information on the dates of regional and national meetings, and a list of Bible verses to accompany the Friday tribute.An associative structure governed by the French law of 1901 deals with material matters: the Association de Gestion des Veilleurs.
There is no salaried staff. The expenses of the Fraternity are covered by the free donations of the members.A figure: Theodore Monod
Wilfred Monod's son, Theodore Monod, played an important role in the foundation and support of the Watchers' Fraternity. A figure who has become a media figure, he has also been a singular witness.
At the age of twenty, he gave his father a document in which, he wrote, "I listed a certain number of decisions that I had taken personally to orient my life". This was the occasion and the basis for the foundation of the Third Order.
Very quickly called upon by the National Museum of Natural History to undertake numerous trips and missions throughout the world, he established a faithful correspondence with the Watchers, anxious to enlighten and support his companions. In 1927, while meditating in front of Charles de Foucauld's hermitage in the Hoggar, he exclaimed: "I found in the archives of the Tamanrasset post a large typewritten notebook in which Charles de Foucauld had drawn up the statutes of a brotherhood which is a sort of third order, open to all, lay people, single or not, ecclesiastics: there are pages inspired by the purest spirit of St. Francis, on humility, poverty, the sanctity of work, which would deserve to be known one day and which would be especially useful to the Watchers".In 1925, in Cameroon, he wrote the Livre de prière des Veilleurs (Prayer Book of the Watchers), which was used for a long time in the Fraternity. In it, he proposed prayers for the three daily moments of recollection, which he called the offices of the light, the flame and the perfume, as well as liturgies for various other occasions.Faithful all his life to his youthful commitment, he recites the Beatitudes daily in Greek (the original language of the New Testament). His life ethic, his relationships and his commitments testify to a personal appropriation of the main elements of the Watchers' Rule that opens to the universal.
The Friday tribute recommended by the Watchers becomes for him, for example, the occasion for a weekly fast of twenty-four hours, about which he confides: "Friday pleases me, because it is also the sacred day of Islam, which allows me to evoke my Muslim brothers, just as we found ourselves associated with them during the Algerian war, when Louis Massignon organised fasts for peace. The results of what we do are not always very visible, but I believe that the little we can do, and I add the very little we can do for peace, (...) we must do it all the same".