Legatus learns about how rodeo star, entrepreneur learned to put God first 

As a cradle Catholic who grew up on the Louisiana Gulf Coast, Lance Mudd loved Jesus, but he didn’t always love him most. Blessedly, he told the Wichita chapter of Legatus at its Sept. 8 meeting, held at Wichita’s Newman University, as worldly success in the rodeo arena and then the business world failed to satisfy, the Lord’s divine mercy set him straight.

An early sign that Mudd’s sights were set on earthly things arose when he attended college. He was a regular at the school’s Newman Center, and even made a spiritual retreat, he recalled, but when rodeo season started, his priorities were elsewhere.

“I would leave Jesus at the church, put on my hat and boots, and go drinking and fighting – you know, being the cowboy,” he said. 

Mudd was good enough to quit college and go professional as his fiancee Kelly – herself an accomplished cowgirl – continued school. “While I was off playing pro rodeo for a couple years, she got her degree,” he said. “I came home broke. We got married, and she had a job.”

Mudd soon started a solid waste company. “For a couple of years we were just grinding, growing little by little,” he said. “Next thing I know, we were getting bigger and I was working six or seven days.”

Even when he was physically in church, Mudd’s mind and heart were elsewhere. “I’d go to Mass with my wife and my girls, but during Mass – when the priest would hold up the Eucharist – I’d be elbowing my girls about where they wanted to eat,” he said. “My beeper would go off and … I would leave Mass to call that person because my slogan was, ‘You call, we haul.’”

A surprise windfall came when a national competitor made a successful bid to purchase his company for nearly $2 million. “I hit a grand slam,” Mudd said. “At that young age I had never dreamed of making that kind of money, but I never thanked God. It was all me doing everything.”

Later, Hurricane Rita wrought destruction along the Gulf Coast, and Mudd perceived an opportunity. “All I could see was dollar bills,” he said. “I hustle and get the contract, and we work for seven days a week, 12-16 hours a day, picking up and hauling debris.”

Mudd’s Mass attendance became less dependable, but his business thrived. “I did really well and made a lot of money, but I had no peace,” he said.

As business flourished, with clients from New Orleans to South Texas, he devoted an increasing amount of his time to entertaining those customers with trips and parties, which extracted a further toll on his spiritual life and sped him down the road to alcoholism.

Amid a moment of clarity, Mudd told his wife he would quit drinking and turn to God. On his second dry night he woke up in the wee hours and decided to pray in a church. The front door was locked, but an investigation for another entrance landed him in the parish’s adoration chapel. 

“I walked in, there was an old gentleman sitting in the corner, and there was Jesus in the monstrance,” Mudd said. 

He took a seat to a side of the chapel and began to pray silently. “I was like ‘Lord, you know I’m sick. I’ve done and got myself into something and I can’t get out,’” he said. “I went to sleep … for about two and a half hours. People came in and woke me up. But when I left at about 5:30 that morning, it was the most peace and calm I’d had since I was a young man. I didn’t know what happened, but I knew God showered his love and mercy on me.”

In the ensuing days and weeks, Mudd found himself returning to that chapel. Soon he realized he should return to confession for the first time in a great while. 

“I got up the courage and made a good confession,” he said. “As I left, it felt like I was walking on water.”

One thing led to another, and soon Mudd was helping to fund adoration chapels in Mexican parishes, immersing himself in the diary of St. Faustina, and backing ministries to help the incarcerated, addicts, and alcoholics. Eventually, however, he admitted God reminded him of his vocation as a husband and father.

“In adoration I heard ‘Go home,’” he said.

He silently objected and cited all his good projects, only to feel God insist they were under divine care. After Mudd left the adoration chapel in a huff, he stopped in a bookstore and noticed a display for a book about St. Teresa of Calcutta. He accepted the Lord’s instruction after his eyes fell upon her words: “If you want to save the world, go home and love your family.”

As he concluded his remarks to Legatus, Mudd said he had strengthened his relationship with his family and witnessed the impact on his children’s faith. 

“I don’t think it’s what I’ve told them about life, because I don’t know a lot,” he said. “I think they see me going to adoration and daily Mass and recognize I’m a lot more patient with them. And learning humility is the biggest part, because I didn’t have at all.”