Exiling Ourselves: Homily for the 4th Sunday of Lent 2024

4th Sunday of Lent, B                                                                                      March 10, 2024Fr. Alexander Albert                                                              St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette https://youtu.be/f_3QXhry7rc From about 605 to 535 BC, God’s chosen nation of Israel went through the Babylonian Exile, described in the first reading. Our psalm today is a lament, a song expressing the sorrow the Jews felt when it seemed like God had abandoned. Why, though? Why did God allow the Babylonians – a pagan empire – to conquer Jerusalem, destroy the temple, and exile His people to a foreign land? [      ] Sin, obviously. God promises never to abandon his people. Yet, he also promised...Read More

Pastor Column: Casti Connubii IV

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

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