what do I need to face?

Homily

1st Sunday of Lent BI

21 February 2021

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +jmj

What do I need to face?

Lent if it's worth doing is a time of brutal honesty.  Lent is a gift to draw us away from pretense and avoidance.  Jesus goes to the desert right off the bat in Lent to show me how to fight.

St. Mark is a straight shooter.  His Gospel isn't decorated.  In a few short lines, Jesus goes from his baptism, to the desert, then back to Galilee to get to work.  Things happen fast.

So too for me there is no time to waste.  Lent is a sacred time that I waste to my own detriment.  It is in the desert, the place of silence, prayer and fasting, where the most important victories of my life must be won.  Why is this?  It's because placed in the garden, I like Adam when I have every reason to say yes to God and no to temptation, I mess up.  So it has to be from the place where Adam is exiled, from that place where I have every reason to say yes to temptation and no to God, that I must reverse the curse.

Jesus didn't need to be baptized or tempted.  Yet he takes on our nature, and does both, not merely in our place but to go there with us and to show us the way.  Baptism gives us a chance, a real chance, to win the ultimate struggle for life and death. Yet fight we must, as Jesus' temptation after his baptism teaches so clearly.

What do I need to face?  If I waste Lent with pretense and avoidance, this vertical dimension of reality, the kingdom of heaven, will remain in a galaxy far, far away.  Yet if I repent, the kingdom of heaven is right here.

What do I need to face?  For me personally, I need a new heart, with which to love God's people.  I can't fix the one I have, and I'm not meant to.  I need to face the temptation to hold onto the heart I have, instead of daring to receive a new heart.

There's something everyone in this church needs to face.  The Gospel could not be more clear.

Be as honest as you can be.

What do I need to face?