Why do I need a road win?

Homily

1st Sunday of Lent B2

18 February 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Why do I need a critical road win this Lent?

The men's basketball team finally got one at OU yesterday!  See ya Sooners have fun in the SEC. We won't miss you.  After starting 0-5 on the road this year, the Hawks will need a couple more really tough road wins to have a chance to win the Big XII.

You heard the knock against Patrick Mahomes, didn't you?  Before this year, he had never had to win a road playoff game.  He had rarely been a playoff underdog.  The criticism didn't make sense to me, since to get home field advantage in the playoff he had to win lots of road games.  Anyway, he won both playoff road games as an underdog, and that made this Chiefs Super Bowl more improbably and thus more glorious.  The best stories, if you're paying attention, are always the underdog, Hail Mary and comeback from the dead stories.  Fans of Jesus Christ ought to know.

So Mahomes got his road wins as the underdog.  Why do you need a critical road win this Lent?

The first Sunday of Lent sets the tone for a big road win.  It's necessary because Satan routinely kicks our tails on our home field.  This angers our Lord, and motivates Him to be a road underdog on our behalf.  There was no reason for our parents to listen to Satan's temptations in the garden.  None.  But they caved, and He got us.  He still gets the best of us, especially when we're complacent on our home turf.  When things get easy, we lose focus and motivation.  It's our fallen human nature.  Satan is still getting the best of us, and that needs to anger and motivate us.

Jesus shows us exactly how to reverse the curse, and redeem this fallen nature of ours. Right after His baptism, He goes to the desert where He has not advantage, no inherent comfort, control or status.  He prays and fasts and faces temptation, in silence, solitude and suffering.  That's Lent.  The time is at hand to learn from Him that the Spirit given me at baptism is enough to win even as a road underdog.

If the Spirit within me does not drive me into the desert this Lent, I'll never know who I am when everything is against me or how I'll respond when an active shooter is trying to kill me, when things are most intense.  I need the silence, solitude and suffering of Lent as a training ground, so that I know I will choose to trust and love even when I have every reason to lose heart.

For my own sake, I need to go get this road win, with and for Jesus and through His Spirit.  My true character is built on the road, in the desert, at practice, when no one is rooting for me or looking.  I need to know my story, and my nature, and face the fact that when I'm comfortable, I'm selfish.  Yet when my story begins in repentance, it ends in glory.

If the confetti is gonna drop on my head this Easter, and for the victory over evil and death to be real not fake, it will be because I had a real Lent as a road underdog.  Jesus leads me there in these first days of Lent.  It's up to me to know why I need this critical road win.

+mj