“Stay awake and be ready! For you know neither the day nor the hour that your Lord will come” (Matthew 24:42a, 44; 25:13).

The church and calendar year are drawing to a close. We have reached mid-November – the month that the Church has dedicated to intentional prayer for our beloved dead. It is a time of transition and remembrance as we witness the changing of the seasons – the leaves falling from the trees, the air getting cooler, the days getting shorter – as darkness descends earlier. Our Scriptures, seeking to illuminate our path, prompt us to reflect on that moment when God’s response to the petition we make every time we pray the Our Father: “Thy Kingdom Come” – is immediate, here and now – when Christ comes for each of us individually, and for when He comes in glory at the end of days. We are reminded to be vigilant and prepared, for we know not the day, nor the hour.

In Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus said “Stay awake!” as a kind of exclamation point following a parable about ten virgins (or bridesmaids, wedding witnesses) awaiting the return of the bridegroom to accompany him, with lamps lit, into the wedding feast. He tells us that five of them were foolish, and five of them were wise. When the bridegroom was delayed, and the sky grew dark, and “all became drowsy,” the wise ones were prepared, having brought enough oil to keep the flame burning into the night.

While I was praying and listening to the choir sing the Communion meditation at the end of the 9PM Mass on Sunday, I glanced at the section of the Chapel that is increasingly more populated by members of the Yale Football Team, who are preparing for The Game against Harvard this Saturday. I remembered my first experience of The Game in the Fall of 2019, when students from both schools poured out of the stands onto the field at halftime in a climate change protest, delaying the game for over an hour.

The protest ended peacefully, and The Game commenced. It went into double-overtime, lasting until fifteen minutes past sunset in a stadium without lights. The headline from the ESPN article on this, perhaps the most exciting and strangest chapter in The Game’s history, announced: “Yale rallies in darkness for 50-43 2OT victory over Harvard.” JP Sholfi, who caught the game-tying touchdown with 18 seconds left in the fourth quarter, said that “we were ready to go until tomorrow…it didn't matter if there were lights or not. It didn't matter the time of the day. We were ready to go again and again and again.”[1]

May they be ready for The Game this Saturday, fully awake, wise, and with their lamps lit. And in every circumstance, whether in the full light of day or in the darkness of night, may we keep the fire burning, running on the oil of our faith, and ready for the Lord when He comes.

[1] https://www.espn.com/college-football/recap/_/gameId/401128680