am I hungry?

Homily

1st Sunday of Lent C2

6 March 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Am I hungry?

Uh, no.  I'm more fat than hungry.  The hungriest I have ever been was when as a wrestler I fasted 4 days at a time to make weight.  I thought I was gonna die as a teenager I was so hungry.  But with all due respect to people who are food insecure, the vast majority of us here are just the opposite.  We have too much bad food.  None of us gets hungry like Jesus did.

Maybe you're signed up for a Lenten program promising you the best Lent ever.  If that is advertised, run away!  You are not going to have the best Lent ever.  Jesus did, and his record is unbreakable.  We're just limping in the Master's shadow.  However, His desert experience is the pattern of our Lenten observance.  

First of all, He enters Lent not on a self-improvement ego trip, but instead is driven by the Holy Spirit to face what He needs to on our behalf.  So too my Lent.  My Lent must be Spirit not ego driven.  The Spirit will drive me to the things I need to face.  I need to ask Him about that.  

I love the prayers at Mass asking for deliverance from evil and safety from distress.  I am a wimp, so I need those prayers or I am doomed.  Still, I need no less to do battle with the things I have been avoiding.

Am I hungry?  Again, not like Jesus.  He is hungry for God alone and above all.  The things He is tempted with - pleasure, power and honor - made quick work of Adam and Eve who saw the fruit as juicy, something more and a way to rival God instead of loving Him - but Jesus makes quick work of these temptations.  

Notice the three temptations progress in three locations, starting low with the temptation to lust, then proceeding higher through greed then ending with the queen of vices, pride!  Notice that Satan is an expert theologian, quoting Scripture in the last temptation, and that He reigns in everything that is less than the highest good, love of God alone.

Jesus makes quick work of the temptations, yet at the end of 40 days.  We get the temptation Gospel at the beginning, so we can use throughout all 40 days the weapon of fasting to combat lust, the weapon of almsgiving to defeat greed, and the weapon of prayers to conquer pride.

So let's be about it!  I'm not hungry enough.  I'm certainly chock full of lust, greed and pride, consumed with the pursuit of pleasure, control and honor.  Yet these fall so short of my desire to love God alone by being a better father, one that wastes time enjoying his children, seeing them as a gift rather than a burden.

So let's be about.  I have plenty of things to face this Lent, and I bet I'm not the only one.  Let's start by asking a pivotal question.

Am I hungry?