Father Albert Blount remembers several years ago when he entered the RCIA process his spiritual godmother saying to him that one day he was going to be a priest.
“I told her she was crazy,” Father Blount said with a chuckle.
A year later, when his spiritual godmother began the process of becoming a woman religious, from the convent she sent him a letter saying, “I can’t help but hope and pray that you become a priest because I don’t think your heart was made for one person.”
That letter triggered a journey that culminated in Father Blount kneeling before Bishop Michael G. Duca on May 27 and being ordained a priest.
Father Blount said the letter stirred up something deep inside of him, deep enough to say, “Lord, I don’t want this but I will be happy if this is what you want for me so give me the desire if this is what you want.”
Fast forward to 2013 when during a silent retreat Father Blount, who spent his childhood years in Houma, met St. Therese of Lisieux while in prayer and left with a desire to be “little like she was, which I thought was not possible for me coming from such a complicated life.”
Two years later, while living in Philadelphia, on another silent retreat, he began praying a novena to St. Therese when he said the Lord “showed me it made a lot of sense to be a priest.”
Thus the journey began but was immediately met with a brief detour as he was initially rejected by the Diocese of Baton Rouge because he had “moved around a lot and they want stability.”
He spent a year working at St. Michael the Archangel Diocesan High School and said he grew immensely.
“From there I became enamored with the priesthood and seminary life,” he said. “The more I learned the more I realized I did not know anything.”
Father Blount said seminary life taught him he has far more gifts than he realized and far more weaknesses than anyone else realized. He came to understand his strengths became his weaknesses when they were no longer focused on God.
‘I lean on my strengths as a way to survive but my weaknesses go out of whack,” he said “What I have realized is I can’t just squash my weaknesses, so I have to continue to use the gifts the Lord has given me and to surrender those to him so that they can be purified and serve the people I will be serving.”
He did say he believes his greatest gift is his ability to connect with people, admitting he has been told by several people that when they have met him, they assumed they were his best friend, especially by many priests.
He said he is blessed with the ability to understand each person and to see the heart of that person and not their weaknesses.
“Seeing them as they are, as the Lord created them to be, and to allow that to be how I encounter them and where I meet them.”
He candidly admitted that his greatest challenge in his ministry will be himself, the times when he tries to make it his priesthood and not the Lord’s priesthood. He said then it becomes about what he thinks is best or necessary and what the Lord desires to do at that moment.
“There is a huge difference there,” he said. “I have to slow down and move with the Lord.
“Anything is possible with the Lord.”
Overcoming those challenges will lie in perseverance in relationships, saying that is “really the only answer.”
“Because if I try to overcome these weaknesses myself then I will just go deeper into another weakness fixing myself,” he said. “Which is then a cyclical toxicity so it’s going to be laying down before the Lord every single day in prayer, in the good times and the bad times.”
Father Blount credited Director of Vocations Father Joshua Johnson to being a mentor and a role model. Father Blount attended Father Johnson’s ordination in 2014 and a year later, when Father Blount became a sacristan at Christ the King Church and Catholic Student Center at LSU, he had a conversation with Father Johnson who was parochial vicar at the time.
“He said ‘I am not here to be your friend, I am here to be your father,’ ” Father Blount said. “Because he maintained those boundaries and was true to his word, that relationship turned into a really good friendship. That really taught me a lot.
Father Blount celebrated his first Mass at Sacred Heart Church in Baton Rouge, where Father Johnson is pastor, only hours after his ordination.
Father Blount will begin his ministry as parochial vicar at St. John the Evangelist Church in Prairieville, where Father Andrew Merrick, currently the pastor at Christ the King, will assume pastoral duties July 1.