Author: Father Albert

Homily for the 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time: Aspiring to Greatness

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29th Sunday of Ordinary Time, B                                                                  October 17, 2021Fr. Albert                                                                                St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette https://youtu.be/YMh_jINNQ5k “You can do whatever you set your mind to.” No, you can’t. This claim is made all the time by parents, teachers, advertisements, and politicians in our culture. Children are filled with this idea from the time they are very little and hear it repeated constantly until some brutal encounter with reality shatters this fragile illusion. Then they must choose between being willfully naive, coldly cynical, or coming to a greater realism. And few people really get to that last one. I once...Read More

Homilies for the 27th & 28th Sundays of Ordinary Time: What We Have In Common

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27th Sunday of Ordinary Time, B                                                                  October 3, 2021Fr. Albert                                                                                St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette https://youtu.be/XevZjQ6nALs “It is not good for the man to be alone.” God knows this, he isn’t just figuring it out. Neither is he surprised that none of the animals prove “to be a suitable partner for the man.” He is not showing the animals to Adam as part of an experiment, he is doing it as a lesson for Adam, for all mankind. He is teaching us that we are not meant to be alone… that we are meant to be in communion with...Read More

Pastor Column: The Value of Money

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From the bulletin of October 10, 2021      As I mentioned last week, this week is the annual financial report. Please see the handout for more details on numbers, accountability, and where it goes. In this space, I want to address the point of giving in the first place.      First, why does giving matter? Besides the obvious practical aspects, it is an important part of our spiritual lives. If what we believe about God is true - that he loves us, gave us his only Son, and calls us to eternal life with him - then it should affect...Read More

Pastor Column: Casti Connubii IV

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From the bulletin of October 3, 2021      After addressing the sacramentality and indissolubility of marriage, Pope Pius XI’s letter continues with a lament of social conditions that work against the good of marriage in society. He lists a variety of mediums of entertainment (radio, television, plays) and nots that they increasingly extol sin (like adultery and fornication) as good or at least as something less than terrible.      From there, he targets a particular falsehood that we’ve seen play out in the worst way in our society today. There were and increasing number of philosophers and social commentators who...Read More

Homily for the 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time: Riches That Burn

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26th Sunday of Ordinary Time, B                                                                  September 26, 2021Fr. Albert                                                                                St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette https://youtu.be/FnF5xxxFkwU Here we are, the prophetic crescendo of the letter of St. James. And when I say “prophetic,” I don’t mean James is predicting the future but that he, like many prophets before him, strongly warns us about sin, death, and judgment. And James gets this preoccupation with damnation from his cousin, Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Hell is real and people do go there. Damnation is real. It isn’t some medieval masochist who came up with the idea of eternal fire, but...Read More

Pastor Column: Casti Connubii II

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     After that brief interruption for the sake of the Ember Days, we return to Pope Pius XI’s letter on marriage. We are still addressing the second blessing of marriage. The last thing mentioned was the virtue of chastity, which applies even in marriage. Chastity always means self-control so that we can love others as people and not objects. Outside of marriage, this takes the form of physical self-denial, but the aspect of self-control still applies even within marriage. There are many nasty and prejudiced jokes out there about Catholics having large families and how women are treated. These insults...Read More

Homily for the 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time: Love or Passion?

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25th Sunday of Ordinary Time, B                                                                  September 19, 2021Fr. Albert                                                                                St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette https://youtu.be/PQeOTknERwA Love God and love your neighbor. It’s our mission statement and it is the greatest commandment. Love of neighbor in particular is the driving theme of St. James’ letter that we’ve been working through for a few weeks. Today, James addresses one of the great obstacles to actually doing this: why is it so hard to love our neighbor? To embrace poverty and sacrifice in order to be closer to God? In a word, your passions. What is a passion? Your passions are...Read More

Homily for the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time: Deaf To Justice

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23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, B                                                                  September 5, 2021Fr. Albert                                                                                St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette https://youtu.be/GdV_jyLIg1o Judgement. Discrimination. These words are sort of taboo nowadays. A history of injustice and prejudice in our country and even the warnings of scripture give some reason for that. Jesus says not to judge. In our series on the letter of St. James we today are told by him to “show no partiality.” Yet, it can be confusing because to be a rational human being requires you to make judgments. Having a functioning society requires discrimination. Before he was healed, the deaf man...Read More

Pastor Column: Christ The King

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     Having completed our journey through John 6 and its special focus on the Eucharist, we return to our ongoing study of teachings throughout Church history. Just before the detour, we learned a little about Pope Pius XI (1922-1939). Today, we pick up with his document on Christ the King, titled Quas Primas, which means “which is first.” It was the document he wrote when he added the feast of Christ the King to our Church calendar.      Since he was reigning in the time between the wars and the all the chaos that that ensued, Pope Pius XI was...Read More