Tag: Poverty

Where is God? Homily for Christmas 2025

Posted on by Father Albert
Christmas                                                                                         December 25, 2025Fr. Alexander Albert                                                            St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville https://youtu.be/KaOd3emzO4s “Where is God?” Agnes Bojaxhiu once asked a variation of that question to a bishop during adoration. Agnes was born in 1910 to a devoutly Catholic family. Besides their daily prayers and weekly Mass attendance, the family also expressed their faith in and love of the invisible God with a weekly visit to the poor to bring food and clothes and company. Like any Catholic family and even many secular ones, Christmas was a time of joy and celebration and family and...Read More

The Joy of Poverty: Homily for Gaudete Sunday 2025

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3rd Sunday of Advent, A                                                             December 14, 2025Fr. Alexander Albert                                                         St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville N.B. Technical Difficulties meant the recording failed this week. You don’t have to feel Catholic in order to be Catholic. You don’t have to feel Catholic in order to be Catholic. Somehow, American Catholics bought into the lie that practicing a faith you don’t feel deep down makes you a hypocrite, that acting Catholic while you have doubts makes you a hypocrite. It doesn’t. How do I know? Because we have an example no less illustrious than John the Baptist himself. Look again at what...Read More

Viva Cristo Rey: Homily for Christ The King Sunday 2025

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Christ the King, C                                                                   November 23, 2025Fr. Alexander Albert                                                          St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville https://youtu.be/UcLneADiZKo Ninety-eight years ago today, the Mexican Jesuit priest José Ramón Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez was led before a firing squad in Mexico City. The Mexican government had severely restricted Catholicism at that time. So, Padre Miguel Pro continued to minister in secret. Eventually, he was caught. On the morning of November 23, 1927, Miguel Pro, holding a rosary in one hand and a crucifix in another, blessed the men about to shoot him and knelt to pray. He then stood and extended his hands like...Read More

Seeing the Kingdom of God: Homily for St. Frances Cabrini

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Thursday Week 32 OT           St. Frances Xavier Cabrini                  November 13, 2025Fr. Alexander Albert                                                         Vermilion Catholic, Abbeville Audio Recording: The movie Cabrini is well made and fairly compelling to watch. It does a good job of portraying just how hard it was for St. Frances Xavier Cabrini to do her work, showing the obstacles, the reluctance of some Church leaders, and how bold and persistent Mother Cabrini could be in the face of those challenges. It conveys well her love for the poor and her witness to human dignity. For those reasons, it’s worth watching. But it misses something...Read More

Thy Kingdom Come… Where? Homily for the 19th Sunday OT 2025

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19th Sunday of Ordinary Time, C                                                                   August 10, 2025Fr. Alexander Albert                                                              St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville https://youtu.be/nxXZdCHeD7g What is faith? Once, a teacher asked that question to a group of children. One little boy raised his hand and said, “it’s believing something even when you know it’s not true!” Where did he get such an idea? I doubt anyone said those exact words to him. Someone probably told him that with their actions. Children don’t usually get hypocrisy, so they simply take in and imitate what they see. Why did that boy think Faith is believing something you know is...Read More

Going With Gratitude: Homily for the 1st Sunday of Lent 2025

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1st Sunday of Lent, C                                                                                      March 9, 2025Fr. Alexander Albert                                                              St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville https://youtu.be/roydVxA4x5c In 1925 in New York, a 27 year-old woman became pregnant. Normally, it’s not surprising for a woman in her 20s sharing her life with a man to experience that. Only, this woman thought it would never happen because of a choice she had made the last time she was with child, something she thought would leave her barren the rest of her life. But then it happened anyway. This momentous event wasn’t entirely isolated. Shortly before finding herself...Read More

The Good and The Bad: Homily for the 26th Sunday OT 2024

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26th Sunday of Ordinary Time, B                                                                   September 29, 2024Fr. Alexander Albert                                                               St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville https://youtu.be/yOnOWMxOvEg Okay, Jesus, which is it? You seem to be talking out of both sides of your mouth. On one side you say something like “whoever is not against us is for us.” That’s a pretty low bar. That seems pretty easy. All I have to do is not actively oppose you and I’m in? Just give a cup of water to your disciples? Can do! On the other side, however, you threaten hellfire to people who aren’t willing to cut...Read More

A Body Made Real: Homily for the 2nd Sunday of Easter, 2024

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2nd Sunday of Easter, B                                                                                  April 7, 2024Fr. Alexander Albert                                                               St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette https://youtu.be/w5q5Gk1QIFI Does it sound like a cult to you? When you hear that first reading describing the early Christian church, perhaps everyone being “of one heart and mind” sounds a bit like not letting people think for themselves. Perhaps having “everything in common” and no one claiming “any of his possessions [as] his own” sounds a bit like a hippy commune. Perhaps letting the Apostles distribute wealth “to each according to need” sounds a bit like giving the leaders too much power and...Read More

Homily for the 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time: Salty or Sterile

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5th Sunday OT, A                                                                                           February 5, 2023Fr. Alexander Albert                                                              St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette https://youtu.be/ABe_E_BBg5U “You are the light of the world.” Think about a room full of candles. It’s pretty easy to read with ten candles lit, but not so easy with only one. And an unlit candle or a hidden lamp is almost worse than useless, casting shadows where it should be adding light. “If salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” Do you know what happens...Read More

Homily for the 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time: Blessedness and Joy

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4th Sunday OT, A                                                                                            January 29, 2023Fr. Alexander Albert                                                              St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette https://youtu.be/05AboWUvaQk They are true, you know. These beatitudes, these promises of blessedness are not rhetorical… Jesus isn’t just trying to make a point. What he says is true. There is real blessedness, real joy to be found in each one of these examples. And no, it’s not just a future happiness that he’s talking about. The reasons he gives are in the future tense – will inherit, will be comforted – but the description of blessedness is right now – blessed are they....Read More