Daily Collection: Tuesday of the Third Week of Easter

The Collect for Tuesday of the Third Week of Easter is: "O God, who open wide the gates of the Heavenly Kingdom to those reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, pour out on your servants an increase of the grace you have bestowed, that, having been purged of all sins, they may lack nothing that in your kindness you have promised. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever." Reflection [caption id="attachment_1196" align="alignleft" width="130"] Yes, that is Fonzie from Happy Days....Read More

Daily Collection: Monday of the Third Week of Easter

The Collect for Monday of the Third Week of Easter is: "Grant, we pray, almighty God, that, putting off our old self with all its ways, we may live as Christ did, for through the healing paschal remedies you have conformed us to his nature. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever." Reflection The Resurrection means that there is a new and better life meant for all of us. Like Christ, we have to die in order to attain that new life. This applies in the literal final...Read More

Homily for the Third Sunday of Easter

Homily for the Third Sunday of Easter                                                       April 15, 2018 Fr. Albert                                                                                            St. Peter’s, New Iberia  Christianity is on trial. The world is our courtroom and the whole human race is the Jury. The charge is simple: we claim that Jesus rose from the dead and that this means everyone should repent of their sins. And do you know where you are in this trial? The witness stand. Yes, every single Christian believer is testifying to this truth. But we are losing. The vast majority of humanity… about 5 billion people do not...Read More

Daily Collection: Third Sunday of Easter

The Collect for the Third Sunday of Easter is: "May your people exult for ever, O God, in renewed youthfulness of spirit, so that, rejoicing now in the restored glory of our adoption, we may look forward in confident hope to the rejoicing of the day of resurrection. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever." Reflection Joy is the theme of the season, so we ask for the grace to find that joy, to "exult," in the right things. Since salvation...Read More

Daily Collection: Saturday of the Second Week of Easter

The Collect for Thursday of the Second Week of Easter is: "Set aside, O Lord, the bond of sentence written for us by the law of sin, which in the Paschal Mystery you canceled through the Resurrection of Christ your Son. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever." Reflection Many people do not seem to think in this way anymore, but the reality is that Original Sin put all of humanity in debt. That's what this prayer means by the "bond of sentence." In justice, that debt means...Read More

Daily Collection: Pope St. Martin I

The Collect for Pope St. Martin is: "Grant, almighty God that we may withstand the trials of this world with invincible firmness of purpose, just as you did not allow your Martyr Pope Saint Martin the First to be daunted by threats or broken by suffering. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.." Reflection Pope St. Martin I was the last Pope to be martyred. He was exiled and died from mistreatment and starvation. He vehemently opposed a terrible heresy that...Read More

Daily Collection: Thursday of the Second Week of Easter

The Collect for Thursday of the Second Week of Easter is: "O God, who for the salvation of the world brought about the paschal sacrifice, be favorable to the supplications of your people, so that Christ our High Priest, interceding on our behalf, may by his likeness to ourselves bring us reconciliation, and by his equality with you free us from our sins. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever." Reflection Though a complicated sentence, this prayer is rich in what...Read More

Daily Collection: Tuesday of the Second Week of Easter

The Collect for Tuesday of the Second Week of Easter is: "Enable us, we pray, almighty God, to proclaim the power of the risen Lord, that we, who have received the pledge of his gift, may come to possess all he gives when it is fully revealed. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever." Reflection The power of the risen Lord is the power to overcome death and live in eternal happiness. In order to benefit from this power, we not...Read More

Pope Francis Endorses Albert the Ordinary!

Okay, that title was kind of click-bait [caption id="attachment_1157" align="alignright" width="161"] "Thumbs up to Albert the Ordinary!" 1[/caption] But, it a very real sense it is true. When I created "Albert the Ordinary," I did not know that Pope Francis was planning to write a whole 44 page exhortation on ordinary holiness, but he did! On the Solemnity of the Annunciation, the Vatican released Gaudete et Exsultate: On The Call To Holiness In Today's World. In essence, the whole point of the document is to tell the whole world, all those ordinary people out there, that they too can and...Read More

Daily Collection: The Annunciation

The Collect for the Solemnity of the Annunciation is: "O God, who willed that your Word should take on the reality of human flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, grant, we pray, that we, who confess our Redeemer to be God and man, may merit to become partakers even in his divine nature. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever." Reflection This prayer refers to what we often call "the marvelous exchange." God becomes man so that we can be come like God, "partakers in the...Read More