Author: Father Albert

Fear of Fruitlessness: Homily for the 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time

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27th Sunday of Ordinary Time, A                                                                  October 8, 2023Fr. Alexander Albert                                                               St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette https://youtu.be/hzKx4gYwYDc Why didn’t they just give him some of the grapes? No one likes it when it’s time to pay the rent. But how much sense does it make that their first response is to beat, kill, and stone the messengers? No request for leniency, no negotiation. It’s not like the landowner is unreasonable or impatient. He tried again, even after they murdered his servants. He sent his own Son. Clearly, if these tenants had even tried to work out a deal...Read More

Enough, Lord!: Homily for the Lafayette Eucharistic Rally 2023

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Votive Mass of the Holy Eucharist                                                                 October 5, 2023Fr. Alexander Albert                                                               Cajundome Convention Center https://www.youtube.com/live/pnFJrLR7vKI?si=idBWav2wzPAOzWBQ&t=2211 “Enough, Lord!” Who among us has not made this exasperated prayer of Elijah our own? There’s usually joy and all kinds of good fortune that comes along with the first serious turn towards the Lord, but it seems only a matter of time before any committed believer reaches the point where they feel as he did – alone, burdened, and just plain weary of feeling like the harder they try to do the right thing, the more everything goes wrong....Read More

Not To Count: Homily for the 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time

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26th Sunday of Ordinary Time, A                                                                  October 1, 2023Fr. Alexander Albert                                                               St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette https://youtu.be/P9Y2vj_vdXk It’s not a ledger. We talk like it is, but judgment isn’t a ledger with good on one side, bad on the other, and whichever has the most decides your fate. If you don’t know better, it seems reasonable that your final fate is determined simply by whether or not you did more good than bad or more bad than good. That kind of idea why the first reading is addressed to people who accuse God of being unfair in how...Read More

The Just Wage: Homily for the 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time

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25th Sunday of Ordinary Time, A                                                                  September 24, 2023Fr. Alexander Albert                                                               St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette https://youtu.be/yNuELL_bquA I… don’t often address politics and economics directly from the pulpit. I don’t want to encourage our American tendency to over-politicize everything. Still, it’s the Church’s job to give the laity moral guidance on politics and economics even if the specific policy-making is left up to the laity. Yes, people of good faith can legitimately disagree on specific applications so long as they don’t reject the principles. Of course, that presumes they know what the principles are. Today is a chance...Read More

What Is There to Lose? Homily for the 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time

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24th Sunday of Ordinary Time, A                                                                   September 17, 2023Fr. Alexander Albert                                                               St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette https://youtu.be/KZvkzZgueNM There’s no clever twist here. Jesus’ point is pretty straightforward: forgive other people or you will not be forgiven. And if we aren’t forgiven, we go to Hell. Jesus uses the number seventy-seven as a symbolic number that means “as many times as it takes.” Forgiving people is hard and it’s harder the more they hurt you. But Jesus doesn’t offer exceptions. Forgive or you will not be forgiven. To understand why, we have to get our first principles right, the...Read More

Being the Bad Guy for Love: Homily for the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time

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23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, A                                                                   September 10, 2023Fr. Alexander Albert                                                               St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette https://youtu.be/LDdfIRPwomE There are many things I love about being a priest: Mass, confessions, baptisms, weddings, flying in a helicopter to bless the crops from above… the fun stuff that only a priest gets to do, things that help people, often in ways I get to see first-hand. It’s why there’s joy even in the sadder stuff like anointings of the sick and funerals. As with anything worth doing, these can get old and sometimes stress makes it harder to see the joy,...Read More

Not as Human Beings: Homily for the 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time

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22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, A                                                                  September 3, 2023Fr. Alexander Albert                                                               St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette https://youtu.be/8fyh0bbujDU “Get behind me Satan.” It’s quite the change, really. Last week’s gospel shows Jesus naming Simon “Rock” – Peter in Greek – and proclaiming that the gates of the netherworld will not prevail against the Church founded on that rock. Mere minutes later, Jesus uses a very different name for Simon Peter: Satan. Kind of looks like that promise of never being defeated didn’t last very long, doesn’t it? Appearances can be deceiving. In fact, that’s exactly the point Jesus makes:...Read More

The Key to Evangelizing: Homily for the 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time

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21st Sunday of Ordinary Time, A                                                                   August 27, 2023Fr. Alexander Albert                                                               St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette https://youtu.be/2g6YXhWwMqc Maybe you felt it… With all the talk about tension and jealousy and evangelization, maybe you felt this uncomfortable question in the back of your mind. I’ve been focusing on what it means to evangelize the world while also becoming less like the world. But perhaps you’ve found yourself wondering about more basic questions like: “What’s a practical way to evangelize?” “Why is God doing things this way?” and “Are we really sure we’re right and the world isn’t?” For a...Read More

Jealous for Salvation: Homily for the 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time

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20th Sunday of Ordinary Time, A                                                                   August 20, 2023Fr. Alexander Albert                                                              St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette https://youtu.be/A7z5KmsFjZs To be Catholic is to live in tension… to be in the world but not of the world. The more we live our faith, the more we should love the people around us. At the same time, the more we live this out, the more we are opposed to the falsehoods and sins of those same people. While growing in our love of others, we simultaneously grow in ways that put us in conflict with them. That tension can be difficult...Read More

Up, Up, Up: Homily for the Assumption of Mary

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Assumption of Mary                                                                                       August 15, 2023Fr. Alexander Albert                                                               St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette https://youtu.be/d8MApXvCvRs Up, up, up. If we wanted to distill the entirety of this Festival to a single word, it would be “up.” The Assumption celebrates when Mary was taken up into heaven, but that direction, that movement didn’t start at the end of her life. Indeed, it began over a thousand years before. King David, anointed by Samuel the prophet and successor to Saul as king of Israel, set out to properly establish and rule the kingdom given him by God. He conquered...Read More