New Year’s Day is often viewed as a fresh start, but 2025 began in sorrow following an attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Brett shares his emotions about the tragedy as a New Orleans resident, and team Busted Halo discusses finding hope in times of despair.
Brett begins, “For [my wife] Brittany and I, and for many other people, New Orleans is like a bastion of joy and hope. It’s a symbol of enjoying life and embracing hope. They’ve gone through so much that they’re known for it…but it’s really tough.”
“It’s very hard for me to try and figure out how somebody could go that far,” Brett says, in discussing the attacker. “That’s why I ended up [pursuing a career] in therapy. How can you get that far from the perspective that life is beautiful, sacred, joyous, and filled with hope?”
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“How are you that tortured, where you want to kill people who are having fun? You’d have to have such a tortured soul, and I feel so bad for those people too. Which is tough to say, though we pray for enemies,” Brett says through tears. “For all of the stories we talk about it’s like, you might not know him, but it’s somebody’s kid, it’s somebody’s best friend.”
Brett shares his own internal conflict, as he is traveling and enjoying vacation while others mourn. “This is a very peak moment of something we’ve talked about many times, that life is a mix of the most beautiful and joyous [moments] and some very deep, dark tragedies. We don’t really know why, but it’s the truth and sometimes it’s hard to mix those,” he says.
Father Dave relates this theme of simultaneous hope and despair to Pope Francis’ recent “Urbi et Orbi” address. He notes how the Pope named this Jubilee Year “Pilgrims of Hope,” but also listed many wars, tragedies, and injustices around the world. Father Dave says, “[The Pope says] here are concrete reasons why we need to actually live into this virtue of hope, which is just like the virtue of patience. You need to practice it, because it doesn’t come naturally; It is something like exercise.”
“We use the word hope in different ways,” Father Dave continues. “It’s not, ‘I hope I win the lottery.’ It’s not, ‘I didn’t study for the exam, I hope I get an A.’ This is a genuine Christian virtue that we need to put effort into. Like when Pope Francis says, ‘fling open the doors of dialogue’ it is different than people just saying, ‘Well, I hope the war ends.’ It’s an empty word if there’s nothing behind it.”
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Krista shares how her priest discussed a similar topic in his Epiphany Mass homily. “He noted how in this Gospel reading of the kings coming to see the newborn [Jesus], there’s a lot of darkness woven into the readings with the light. We can’t just wait until it’s all light and all good and for us to have hope and to be joyful, faith-filled people.”
Father Dave expands on this saying, “Herod wanted to assassinate the newborn baby, and the Magi were being manipulated by the political structures. That was darkness, even in the midst of their trip following the light…The Magi had to be proactive in the ways in which they allowed that darkness not to happen.”
“You have to actively work at hope,” Brett says. “To use New Orleans as an example, Carnival starts [January 6] too, which seems out of place. The city will undoubtedly be the peak of joy for the next month, but that is what we’re talking about: It’s a sign of hope…and you hope that people who are feeling hopeless are inspired by that and lifted up.”
