Fr. Brian Soliven Sunday Sermons

To produce good fruit, we must do this one thing. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

Beauty is not merely an ornament placed upon religion, as one might put flowers upon a table; it can be a signpost pointing beyond itself. A beautiful thing awakens in us a longing that no earthly object quite satisfies, as though the world were whispering that its loveliness comes from somewhere deeper. This is one reason Catholicism can appear so profoundly beautiful: in its churches, its music, its art, its liturgy, its sacramental imagination, and its reverence for the created world, it refuses to divide the visible from the invisible. The candle, the stained glass, the incense, the chant—all can become reminders that creation is not God, but is capable of bearing His glory. Catholic beauty at its best does not ask us merely to admire beautiful things; it teaches us to look through them, until the beauty of creation awakens our hunger for the Beauty who made it. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

On January 15th 2019, the world saw the horrific scene as a group of heavenly armed Muslim terrorists attacked a hotel and commercial complex in Nairobi, Kenya. The sole goal -- kill as many Christians and non-muslims as possible. Unbeknownst to them, a SAS British forces solider was charging to the scene. After donning on his tactical vest, rifle and knife, he set out to engage the terrorist. But before he entered the hotel, he said a prayer. It's the only prayer that came to his mind at the specific moment... --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

Last weekend, I had the great privilege of presiding over a wedding at St. Joseph's, my old parish. The groom had once been one of my altar servers: a shy, quiet, somewhat awkward eleven-year-old boy. Now, more than a decade later, he stood before me as a young man in his mid-twenties, a competitive bodybuilder, and a bridegroom. And he had asked me to be the priest who would witness his wedding. How could I possibly say no?I said yes gladly. For this is one of the great and hidden joys of being a priest: to watch a human soul grow. We meet people at one chapter of their lives and, if God is kind enough to let us remain, we sometimes get to see the next. We baptize children who later kneel at the altar. We teach young men and women who eventually stand before us as husbands and wives. We plant seeds whose flowering we may never see.And sometimes, God allows us to see the flower. But there was another familiar face at the wedding. The groom's older brother was there—a man I had not seen since I left St. Joseph's in 2016. Both brothers had once served Mass with me on Sundays. They had stood beside me at the altar, close to the Holy of Holies, in the presence of that great Mystery where Jesus Christ gives Himself to us in the Eucharist—Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. But somewhere along the way, his older brother began to drift. It did not happen all at once. Perhaps it rarely does.He had questions. The same questions that have troubled generations of young people: Does God really exist? Why do I have to go to Mass on Sunday? Why does any of this matter? What if the Church is wrong?Questions are not the enemy of faith. But questions can become doors, and every door may open either toward God or away from Him. Eventually, the questions became too heavy. The boy who had once served Christ at His altar walked away. He left the practice of the Catholic faith and followed the current of the world, where so many bright things glitter upon the surface of the water. And yet the human heart is a strange thing. It can possess much and still hunger.It can taste pleasure and still thirst. It can win applause, accumulate success, pursue power, seek romance, entertain itself endlessly and still, when the noise finally ceases, hear the same ancient question whispering from somewhere deep within: Is this all?The wedding was the first time my old altar server had stepped inside a church in years. I was, of course, delighted to see him.During the homily, I made fun of his long hippie hair. Afterwards, he returned the favor by making fun of my male-pattern baldness. But then he said something that I have not been able to forget. Referring to the homily, he said: “Now that's how you get people back into church!” I do not know precisely what struck him. I do not know which word, which idea, or which buried memory stirred within him.Perhaps it was something I said about marriage: that it is not merely a human arrangement but part of a divine design. That God created us male and female for a reason, and that the mystery of our bodies points beyond itself toward something greater. That we were made for a love which is not merely emotional or pleasurable, but total, faithful, fruitful, and sacrificial. And that the deepest form of love does not culminate in the possession of another, but in the gift of oneself. Which is precisely where marriage finally points us—to Jesus Christ. For the Cross is the place where Love reveals its true face.There, the One who could have demanded everything instead gives everything. There, the Bridegroom gives Himself for His Bride. There, we discover that the strange hunger within the human heart is not an accident or an evolutionary inconvenience. It is a clue. Perhaps something in my old altar server's heart was pierced that day. What was it? I can only speculate.But I am certain of this: the human heart was made for more than this world can give. There is a thirst in us that no earthly cup can finally satisfy. We spend our lives reaching for things which promise happiness. We pursue success, admiration, wealth, pleasure, romance, influence, beauty, experiences, and every glittering thing the world places before our eyes. And for a little while, they satisfy us. Then the satisfaction fades. So we reach again. And again. And again. Why? Because finite things cannot fill an infinite longing. There is a hollow place within us that creation itself cannot occupy. There is an ache for meaning, a homesickness for something we cannot quite name. But perhaps the ache is not the disease. Perhaps it is the invitation.And this is the astonishing truth of the Gospel: we are not the only ones who thirst. God thirsts for us first. The One whom we have spent our lives seeking has been seeking us all along.The Father waits for His children. Christ calls to the wandering heart. And the Holy Spirit continues to stir within us that ancient desire for something greater than the passing treasures of this world. So, my friends, I want to invite you on October 1st to the Well. Come with your questions. Come with your doubts. Come if you have been away for years. Come if you no longer know what you believe. Come if you have tried everything the world has offered and have discovered, perhaps quietly and painfully, that you are still thirsty. For the answer to our deepest questions is not ultimately a proposition, an argument, or an idea. It is a Person. The God who thirsts for us first. COME TO THE WELL. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

From the very beginning, God spoke of the Woman whose offspring would crush the serpent's head: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers” (Genesis 3:15). In the fullness of time, that prophecy shone forth in the Blessed Virgin Mary, the humble handmaid whose “yes” opened the way for the coming of our Savior. Through Mary came Jesus Christ, the One who conquered sin, death, and the ancient serpent. No wonder the devils despise her: they see in her the humble Woman whom God chose to oppose their pride, the Mother of the One who destroyed their dominion. Mary does not draw hearts away from Christ—she leads them to Him. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

(Stayed tuned at the end of the homily for a hymn from a Traditional Latin Mass wedding at St. Mary's)Have you ever wondered why relationships are so dang hard? The answer is easy – human relationships are hard because God has placed sinners beside sinners, so that we might learn the strange art of grace. We come seeking love and find ourselves confronted with pride, impatience, selfishness—and, most painfully, our own. The faults of another can become a kind of divine mirror, showing us what we would rather leave unseen. Yet this, too, may be mercy. For God is not merely interested in making us comfortable with one another, but in making us holy. He uses the friction of imperfect love to uncover the hidden chambers of the heart, teaching us to confess where we have sinned, to forgive where we have been wounded, and to receive mercy where we have failed. Thus the difficult person may become, by God's providence, an unwelcome but faithful instrument of our sanctification.When Christ says, “If your brother sins against you,” He speaks to the very condition of life in a fallen world: wherever sinners dwell together, there will be wounds, offenses, and the daily necessity of forgiveness. But the Gospel does not merely teach us how to endure one another; it calls us to participate in the very love by which God has redeemed us. At the Cross, Christ did not wait for us to become worthy of His love—He gave Himself for us while we were still sinners. Thus, when we love the neighbor who has wounded us, we are not simply practicing moral restraint; by grace, we are being conformed to Christ. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” means that the other's good must become a matter of our own concern, even when love is costly. For love “does no evil to the neighbor”; indeed, it fulfills the law because the whole law finds its deepest meaning in the self-emptying love of Christ. The answer to the friction of human relationships is therefore not withdrawal, retaliation, or the keeping of accounts, but the Cross-shaped freedom to forgive, to seek the good of the other, and to love as we ourselves have been loved. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

The wisdom of the world often teaches us to trust what we can measure, master, and explain; but Scripture invites us into a deeper wisdom, one that begins not with the exaltation of man, but with the revelation of Christ. The world says that wisdom is found in possessing answers; Christ shows us that true wisdom is found in knowing the One who is the Truth. What appears foolish to the world—the Cross, surrender, humility, obedience—becomes, in the light of God, the very doorway to life. For the wisdom of Scripture does not merely make us clever; it makes us new. And when the brilliance of human thought has reached its limits, we discover that the ancient words of God were not behind us at all, but were pointing us home. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

Mother Teresa reminded us that poverty is not found only in places where people lack food, shelter, or material possessions. She spoke of a deeper poverty that can exist even amid wealth—the poverty of loneliness, indifference, and feeling unloved. Her message challenges us to look beyond statistics and borders and recognize the human need for compassion everywhere. True richness, she suggested, is not measured by what we possess, but by how deeply we care for one another. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

There is a peculiar wisdom in sitting before the Blessed Sacrament, a wisdom which cannot be hurried into us by books or lectures. Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who made a daily Holy Hour for nearly sixty years, discovered that the soul must sometimes cease talking in order to learn how to listen. “The Holy Hour became a teacher for me,” he wrote, because “looking at the Eucharistic Lord for an hour transforms the heart in a mysterious way.” It is rather like standing in sunlight: we do not grasp the rays, yet by remaining there we are changed by them. Sheen even said that his preaching and “every good thought” were born from that hour before Our Lord. Perhaps this is the wisdom the modern mind finds hardest to accept: that by doing apparently nothing but keeping company with Christ, we may become capable of doing everything else with greater truth, courage, and love. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

There are few questions more difficult, or more easily misunderstood, than the question of why God made us male and female. Our age has given us no shortage of answers. Some tell us that sex is merely a biological accident. Others tell us that it is simply a private identity to be constructed according to our feelings. But perhaps the real trouble is that we have forgotten to ask the question beneath the question. Why did God make us this way? To ask it honestly is not to begin with condemnation, but with wonder. If God is the author of creation, then the difference between man and woman cannot be an arbitrary detail. It must somehow belong to the meaning of creation itself, to the strange and beautiful truth that we were not made for ourselves alone, but for communion, gift, and love. This is why, on October 1st, I want to invite all of you my, dear parishioners, to “The Well” with Christopher West here at St. Mary's Parish. It offers something increasingly rare: a place where difficult questions are not treated as threats, and where Christian teaching is not reduced to a list of prohibitions. Instead, we are invited to see the human person anew. The Christian claim is far more astonishing than “there are rules about sex.” The claim is that the body itself speaks. Male and female are not merely two categories imposed upon an otherwise meaningless existence. They reveal something about the Creator's intention: that love is not fundamentally about taking, possessing, or gratifying the self. Love means making a gift of oneself. And here the mystery becomes still greater. For if we want to understand why God made us male and female, we must eventually come to the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the place where Christianity's vision of the human person ceases to be an abstract philosophy and becomes flesh before our eyes. Christ does not merely tell us that He loves us. He gives Himself to us. His Body is given; His Blood is poured out. The deepest pattern written into creation is revealed at the altar: love gives itself away. We might say that the Eucharist is the answer to the riddle written into the human body. We were made for communion because God Himself is communion. We were made to receive love and to become a gift because Christ shows us that the fullness of life is found not in grasping oneself, but in giving oneself away. The Eucharist reveals the destiny for which the human person was created: not isolation, but union; not consumption, but communion; not self-invention, but self-gift. This is why The Well matters. It is not merely an evening for people who already have all the answers. It is especially for those who have questions—for parents trying to understand the world their children inhabit, for young people trying to make sense of their own bodies and desires, and for anyone who senses that beneath the arguments about sexuality lies a much deeper question about what it means to be human. Christ does not meet our confusion with contempt. He meets it with truth and truth, when seen in Him, is beautiful. So come to The Well. Come not merely to learn what the Church says about male and female, but to discover why the Church believes the human body is good, why our differences have meaning, why love demands a gift of self, and why all of these mysteries finally lead us toward the Eucharist. On the cover of the bulletin, scan the QR code, for more information on this powerful event. I want to see you and your family there at “The Well.” --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

Christ has not called us merely to believe in Him within the walls of our churches, but to carry His reign into the little kingdoms entrusted to us. Within our families, we possess a spiritual authority. It's not the authority to dominate, but the sacred responsibility to pray, to bless, to teach, and to stand firm against all that would draw those we love away from God. The Christian parent is, in a sense, a watchman at the gate: not able to control every heart, but called faithfully to keep the light burning, to speak truth with love, and to make the home a place where Christ is honored. We need not fear the darkness, for the authority we exercise is not our own; it is received from the One whose kingdom cannot be overcome. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

Even the best of us, if left to ourselves, have depths within us from which terrible things might emerge. The knowledge should not drive us to despair, but to dependence: we are safest not when we trust ourselves most, but when we cling most closely to Christ. Every virtue we possess is a gift, every victory a mercy, and every step forward made possible by grace. So let us never boast as though we stood by our own strength, but kneel gladly before the One who holds us—and who, apart from Him, we could never safely hold ourselves. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

Consider what this means. A good earthly husband does not marry his bride and then disappear, leaving her to find her own way through every danger. He protects her. He watches over her when the night is dark. He remains faithful when circumstances are difficult. When the beauty of youth disappears and fades, when the smooth skin is replaced by the wrinkles of stress and time, does a husband forsake his wife? No! And if even imperfect human love can do such things, how much more shall Christ, whose love is perfect? Our Lord calls the Church His Bride. He did not purchase her with silver or gold, but with His own Blood. It would be strange indeed to imagine that He would then abandon her to the storms of history. The Catholic believes that the same Christ who died for His Bride continues to care for her, just as honorable, virtuous man would, yet infinitely more . He guards her through His grace, teaches her through His truth, and guides her through the shepherds He has appointed. This does not mean that every Pope will be a saint, or that every decision made by a Churchman will be wise. The apostles themselves were imperfect men. Peter denied his Lord before becoming the rock upon which the Church was built. The wonder is precisely that Christ can preserve His Bride through imperfect servants. The security of the Church rests ultimately not upon the holiness of popes, bishops, or laymen, but upon the faithfulness of Christ. History may batter the Church, but it cannot become her master. Kings may rise and fall. Philosophies may become fashionable and then vanish. Nations may rage against her, and even her own children may wound her through sin and scandal. Yet the Bridegroom remains.Jesus is the perfect husband. When Christ promised, “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it,” He was not making a poetic suggestion. He was giving His Bride a promise. So now here we are, 2000 years later since the founding of this Church – still standing strong. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

The Prophet Ezekiel saw a valley where death had stripped even hope from the bones, yet God commanded the dead to rise and receive His breath. What the prophet saw in shadow, Christ fulfills in flesh: Jesus does not merely promise life to the dead—He gives Himself as the Bread of Life. In the Eucharist, the One who conquered the grave feeds us with His own risen life, and the Spirit who once breathed upon dry bones now breathes eternal life into us. The valley is no longer the end; in Christ, even our dry bones can live, because the God who raises the dead has chosen to dwell within us. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

God is not a Father who waits coldly at the door for His wandering children to find their way home. He is the Father who goes looking. His love is not a quiet affection, but a holy fire that refuses to be content while even one child remains lost. He pursues us through the dark places of our own making, calling our name beneath all the noise, not because we have earned His search, but because we belong to Him. And when at last we turn toward Him, we discover that the arms reaching for us were already open, and that the journey home was, in a profound sense, a journey into the heart of a Father who had never stopped seeking us.n, but a holy fire that refuses to be content while even one child remains lost. He pursues us through the dark places ofwn making, calling our name beneath all the noise, not because we have earned His search, but because we belong to Him. And when at last we turn toward Him, we discover that the arms reaching for us were already open, and that the journey home was, in a profound sense, a journey into the heart of a Father who had never stopped see --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

Since the beginning, in the garden itself, we have been tempted by the old whisper: you shall be like gods. Yet the temptation is subtler than merely wishing to possess divine power; it is the desire to sit in judgment over good and evil, to declare reality true when it pleases us and wicked when it offends our desires. We would rather make truth than receive it, and crown our own preferences as the measure of righteousness. But in doing so, we do not become gods—we become poor imitations of them, mistaking the throne of judgment for freedom while placing ourselves beneath the tyranny of our own inventions. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

God has given each of us an extremely powerful weapon. We need only the discipline and trust to wield it. St. Padre Pio, the great Italian demon fighter, called it his favorite tool against evil. In the 16th century, St. Pius V called upon it when Christianity was on the brink of being conquered by the Muslim armies of the Ottoman Empire. St. John Paul II used it as a powerful spiritual weapon during the Cold War.This weapon of which I speak, you all know well. You are probably carrying it, concealed in your pockets, at this very moment in church. I am talking about the mighty Holy Rosary. My friends, this Rosary, uttered millions of times every day throughout the world, makes the demons tremble, causes heretics to flee, and converts even the most hardened of sinners.Traditionally attributed to a gift given to St. Dominic in the 12th century, the Rosary calls us to meditate upon the pivotal moments of Jesus' life here on earth, from His birth in Bethlehem to His death on Calvary. You see, the answer to the mountains we face in our lives is simple: more Jesus Christ.Prayer is not a polite request made once and then abandoned if the answer does not come. God calls us to something more stubborn and more trusting: to keep asking, seeking, and knocking. When heaven seems silent, we are tempted to conclude that our prayers have failed. But perhaps the silence is itself part of the lesson. Persistence teaches us that we are not merely asking for a thing; we are learning to desire God Himself, and to remain at His door even when we cannot yet see what He is doing.So do not cease asking simply because the answer is long delayed. Bring the same burden before God again tomorrow, and the day after that, without shame or weariness. The child who keeps returning to his father is not an annoyance but a sign of trust. We may not understand why God delays, nor should we pretend that every prayer will receive the answer we desire. But we may be certain of this: the act of turning again toward God is never wasted. Keep knocking—not because God is reluctant to hear, but because He is teaching us never to stop coming to Him. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

The Assumption of Mary is a quiet but astonishing reminder that God does not mean to save us from our bodies, but to save and glorify them. In Mary, we are shown the human creature already entering, body and soul, into the life for which we were made: not absorption into God, but intimate participation in the divine life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The body we are tempted to regard as merely temporary is destined for glory; the flesh that seems so frail may become an instrument of eternal praise. Mary's Assumption therefore stands like a signpost on the road to our own resurrection: God's final purpose is not the abandonment of creation, but its transfiguration. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

We must forgive, for we ourselves have been forgiven a debt beyond reckoning. The wrongs we bear against one another, though grievous, are but small coins beside the vast debt of sin that stood against us, a debt whose end was death and separation from God. Yet Christ, in His mercy, took that burden upon Himself and opened the way of life to us. Therefore let us not cling to the lesser debts owed by our brothers, but release them as we have been released, remembering always the mercy that first sought us when we had no strength to save ourselves. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

We are forever trying to make ourselves strong enough to need no Father, and this is the very madness from which Christ calls us to be saved. The child does not calculate whether the arms that hold him are capable of holding him; he simply rests there. So must we learn again to become little, not childish, but utterly dependent, emptied of the proud illusion that we can carry ourselves. Our Heavenly Father does not ask us to understand the whole road before we take the next step. He asks us to trust His hand. And perhaps the hardest lesson of faith is also the simplest: that the Kingdom is entered not by those who have learned to stand alone, but by those who have finally learned to let themselves be held. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

There is a curious notion that if we are faithful enough, wise enough, or holy enough, the storms of life will somehow pass us by. Yet Our Lord never promised calm seas. He promised His presence. The storm is not evidence that God has abandoned us; often it is the very place where He teaches us to trust Him. When St. Peter stepped from the boat, he accomplished the impossible. He walked upon the water—not because the waves had ceased or the wind had surrendered, but because his eyes were fixed upon Christ. The miracle was never that the sea became gentle. The miracle was that faith proved stronger than the storm. It was only when Peter measured the size of the waves instead of the greatness of the Savior that fear found its opening. The wind had not grown stronger; his gaze had simply wandered. How often we make the same mistake. We count our troubles more carefully than we count God's promises. We become experts on the waves. Yet anxiety has never calmed a sea, and fear has never carried a soul across the water.Our parish mission boldly calls us to “Be Faithful Like Mary.” Those few words contain a lifetime of wisdom. The Blessed Mother did not live a life free from storms. She knew uncertainty at Bethlehem, sorrow in Egypt, misunderstanding in Nazareth, and unspeakable grief beneath the Cross. But through every trial, her heart remained fixed upon the Lord. She did not pretend the storms were small; she simply knew that God was greater. Her faith was not the absence of suffering but the refusal to let suffering have the final word. To be faithful like Mary, then, is not to ask God for fewer storms, but for steadier eyes. It is to look beyond the crashing waves and behold the One who commands both wind and sea. The Christian's peace is never found in favorable weather; it is found in the presence of a person. As long as Christ remains the object of our gaze, no storm can ultimately overcome us.The waves will rise again. The winds will surely blow. They always do. But if we keep our eyes on Jesus, and if, like Mary, we remain faithful whatever the weather, we will discover that the One who called us onto the water has never ceased holding us in His loving care. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

We do not come to Christ because He promises an easier road, nor because He adorns our hands with the glittering prizes of this passing world. We come because He bids us take up a cross before He speaks of a crown. The Christian faith is not an escape from suffering but an invitation to die to the self that clings so desperately to comfort and applause. If we seek only what is pleasant, we shall soon abandon Him; but if we have seen that He alone is Truth, then even the hardest path becomes worth walking. It is precisely because Christ asks for everything that He is worthy of our trust, for only the One who leads us through death can also lead us into everlasting life. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

*The homily was given at our Traditional Latin Mass, which uses different Sunday Scripture readings*The world is very good at filling our ears, but not our souls. From the moment we awaken, voices compete for our attention, each promising peace if only we will listen a little longer. Yet Christ chose another way. Again and again, the Gospels tell us that He withdrew to lonely places to pray. Before teaching the crowds, before carrying the Cross, before choosing His disciples, He first sought the quiet company of His Father.If the Son of God desired silence, how much more do we?There is something sacred about stepping away from the noise in the middle of an ordinary week. Not because the week has become less busy, but because our hearts have become more needy. A soul cannot live forever on hurried prayers, just as a friendship cannot flourish on passing greetings alone. Love requires presence.At St. Mary's Parish, the side door remains open during the week, quietly inviting anyone who longs for a few moments with the Lord. Beyond that door is not merely a church building, but a sanctuary where the Blessed Sacrament waits in gentle silence. There, in Eucharistic Adoration, Christ asks for nothing spectacular. He simply invites us to be with Him.The world measures success by constant activity. Heaven often measures it by faithful attention. An hour spent before Jesus may seem unproductive to everyone else, yet it is often the hour that puts every other hour in its proper place. In His presence, burdens become lighter, anxieties lose their sharp edges, and the soul remembers who it belongs to.If you find yourself weary this week, do not wait for Sunday to seek Him. Walk through the open side door. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

Is God real? If so, why is there so much evil in the world? How do we know our God exists? Why does God only hear you sometimes? What is going on with the tabernacle and the bread? How do I actually talk to God? These are some of the questions our Confirmation students asked in class one day. These questions can seem like obstacles to faith, when in truth they are often the first footprints leading toward it. A heart that asks such things is not necessarily far from God; rather, it is a heart that seeks. Among Christ's most surprising stories is the parable of the wheat and the weeds in today's Gospel passage. A farmer sows good seed, but in the darkness an enemy scatters weeds among the wheat. The servants are eager to tear the weeds out at once, yet the master restrains them. “Let both grow together until the harvest.” At first this seems almost careless. Why would a good master tolerate weeds? But Christ is teaching us something astonishing: God permits evil, not because He delights in it, but because His wisdom is so great that He can draw from it a harvest more glorious than we can presently imagine.We long for a world where God would uproot every evil before breakfast. Yet if He did, we might discover that many of the roots are tangled with our own. Patience is one of God's greatest mercies. The same sunlight that nourishes the wheat also gives the weeds one final opportunity to become something else. God's delay is not indifference; it is mercy reaching as far as it can before justice finally arrives.Sometimes His greatest answer is not to change our circumstances, but to change us. Silence is not proof that heaven is empty. Often it is the quiet in which roots grow deepest.In the end, Christianity does not merely explain evil; it proclaims that evil does not have the final word. The Cross itself appeared to be the greatest triumph of darkness, yet from that single Friday came the salvation of the world. If God could make mankind's worst crime the doorway to eternal life, then there is no sorrow, no question, no wound He cannot weave into His final harvest. One day, when the wheat is gathered into His barn, we shall discover that not one tear entrusted to Christ was ever wasted. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

There is something deeply unsettling about temptation, not because it shouts, but because it borrows the language of Christ. Our Lord says, "Come to me, all who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest." Sin whispers nearly the same invitation: Come to me. I will quiet your loneliness. I will ease your pain. I will satisfy your hunger. Every addiction makes the same promise, and the devil himself has become a master ventriloquist, mimicking the voice of the Good Shepherd while leading souls toward a precipice. Yet there is one infallible difference. Christ always delivers what He promises, and more; sin never does. It offers rest but leaves exhaustion, freedom but forges chains, pleasure but plants regret. Only Jesus can lay down burdens without laying waste to the soul, for He alone carries the Cross that carries us home. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

There is a quiet fear that follows nearly every human heart: the fear that, in the end, we will be left alone. We can endure hardship more easily than abandonment. Yet this is precisely where the Gospel begins. Christ does not remain a distant God, watching the world from beyond the stars. He comes to us as Immanuel—God with us. He walks our roads, bears our sorrows, enters our suffering, and even steps into death itself so that there is nowhere we can go where He has not already gone before us. The Christian hope is not merely that God will rescue us someday, but that He refuses to leave us in the pit. And a soul that discovers it is never alone has already begun to taste heaven. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

**Thank you for your patience with the slight ruffling noise in the recording. I had microphone issues for some mysterious reason**There is something wonderfully revealing about the old Spanish architect who devoted his life to the grand basilica of La Sagrada Família in Barcelona (still under construction after 144 years). He understood that if stone could preach, then it ought to preach Christ. And so he imagined a church whose highest point would not honor a king, an emperor, or even the genius of its designer, but Jesus Himself. The tallest tower would belong to Christ, as if to remind every traveler, every skeptic, and every weary soul that there is One who stands above every earthly ambition.Our age is forever building towers of another kind. We strive to become taller through success, wealth, influence, or pleasure, believing that if only we could climb high enough, the ache within us would finally be quiet. Yet the heart is not deceived for long. It was fashioned for greatness, but not the greatness of our own making. It longs for the infinite because it was created by the Infinite. Every restless desire is, in the end, a homesickness for Christ.Perhaps this is why our Lord looked upon His disciples and said, "Blessed are your eyes, for they see" (Matthew 13:16). Countless generations had longed to behold the face of the Messiah, and there He stood before ordinary fishermen and tax collectors. Their eyes were blessed not because they possessed extraordinary vision, but because they recognized extraordinary beauty. To see Jesus is to see the fulfillment of every noble longing the human heart has ever carried.The towers of the Sagrada Família rise not merely to impress the eye, but to lift it heavenward. They whisper that true greatness is not found by making much of ourselves, but by gazing upon the One in whom all greatness dwells. The highest things in this world are at their best when they teach us to look beyond themselves.For every human longing, however confused or misdirected, is finally a search for God. As G.K. Chesterton famously observed, "Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God." The tragedy is not that we desire too much, but that we so often mistake the shadow for the substance. Christ alone is the greatness we seek, the beauty we pursue, and the home for which every human heart was made. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

Again and again throughout the long pilgrimage of the Church, the Gospel has conquered hearts not chiefly by the brilliance of argument or the elegance of reason, but by the radiant witness of men and women so utterly convinced that Jesus Christ is the Truth that they counted no earthly treasure—not even their own lives—more precious than Him. The blood of the martyrs has accomplished what the sharpest intellect alone never could: it has persuaded the world that Christ is not merely an idea to be debated, but a King worth dying for. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

The world's greatest sporting event owes its beginnings, in part, to the vision of a devout Catholic. Jules Rimet believed that sport could reflect the dignity of the human person and unite peoples divided by language, culture, and even war. His dream became the FIFA World Cup—a celebration of nations gathered not for conquest, but for friendly competition. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

There is something curious about the way people speak of God. We often imagine Him as distant, alone, or occupied with the endless business of running the universe. We picture a great King, but seldom a Father. Left to ourselves, we could never have guessed what God is like in His own life. We may have discovered that there is a Creator by looking at mountains, stars, or the order of the world, but we could never have discovered the secret of His heart.That secret had to be revealed.When Jesus came, He did not simply bring new commandments or wiser teachings. He came to introduce us to Someone. Again and again He spoke of "My Father." He lived in perfect love, perfect trust, and perfect obedience to the Father. Then He promised the Holy Spirit, the very bond of love between the Father and the Son, to dwell within His people. Suddenly the veil was pulled back. We discovered that God is not solitary. From all eternity, God is a communion of love: the Father giving Himself to the Son, the Son returning Himself completely to the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeding as the living gift of that eternal love.This is not a puzzle for clever minds to solve. It is an invitation.The astonishing thing is that Jesus did not reveal this mystery merely to satisfy our curiosity. He revealed it because He desires to draw us into it. He does not stand at a distance and say, "Look how wonderful My Father's house is." He opens the door and says, "Come in." Through Him we become children of the Father, not by nature, but by grace. We are welcomed into the very family life of God.If this seems too wonderful to believe, that is because it is. No philosopher could have imagined it. No religion devised by man would dare to promise such a thing. We might have hoped for forgiveness. We might even have hoped for heaven. But who would have dared to hope that the eternal Son would make room for us in His own relationship with the Father?Yet this is the Christian gospel. The life of God is not kept behind locked gates. In Christ, it is opened to all who will receive Him. The Father delights to call us His children, the Son calls us His brothers and sisters, and the Holy Spirit teaches our hearts to cry, "Abba, Father."The end of the Christian life is not simply to become better people. It is to share, forever, in the endless exchange of love that has filled the Trinity from all eternity. That is the destiny Jesus came to reveal, and the gift He and only He, came to give. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

It is a curious thing that we often expect God to perform His greatest wonders amid thunder and spectacle, while He prefers the quiet of a confessional. There, behind an ordinary screen or across a simple room, Christ performs miracles no less astonishing than opening blind eyes or raising the dead. He takes a soul bent beneath the weight of guilt and bids it stand upright again. He speaks through the frail voice of a priest, yet it is His own word that breaks the chains no human hand could loosen. The penitent enters carrying a burden invisible to the world and leaves with a heart made lighter than the morning. Such miracles seldom make the news because they occur where heaven most delights to work—in secret. Yet if we could see with God's eyes, we might discover that the greatest marvels on earth are not always the healing of the body, but the resurrection of a soul. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

If we learn to see with spiritual eyes, we begin to recognize a battle unfolding all around us. It is not a conflict over land or power, but a struggle for something far more precious than either: you. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

Let me ask you a question: What is the love of your life? It is not always an easy question to answer. We may think one thing occupies the throne of our hearts, only to discover that something else has quietly taken its place.Perhaps a better question is this: Where do your time, energy, and attention most naturally flow? For what do you willingly sacrifice your comfort, your money, or your peace of mind? The answer to these questions often reveals what we truly love. For the truth is that the center of a person's life is rarely found in what he says is most important to him, but in what he consistently gives himself to. Our hours are like a compass; they point, often more honestly than our words, to the object of our deepest love. Fr. Joseph Whelan, a Jesuit priest from Maryland, once wrote what happens when we truly love something: “It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.”May I suggest making God the love of our lives? Nothing is more practical than finding God. At first hearing, such a statement sounds rather strange. We are accustomed to thinking of practical things as those that concern money, schedules, careers, and the thousand little arrangements by which we order our days. Yet the old Jesuit priest was right when he wrote, “What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.”This is because man is not merely a creature that thinks; he is a creature that loves. Wherever the heart has gone, the rest of the person will eventually follow.Tell me what a man loves, and I can tell you something of the shape of his life. The object of his affection will determine what gets him out of bed in the morning, what occupies his thoughts in the quiet hours, what causes him grief, and what fills him with joy. The lover of wealth sees the world through the eyes of profit. The lover of honor is forever concerned with reputation. The lover of pleasure spends his days chasing delights that vanish almost as soon as they are grasped.“Fall in love… stay in love, and it will decide everything.” There is a profound truth hidden in those simple words. We are always being decided by our loves. The only real question is whether we shall give our hearts to things that perish or to the One who does not.For we become, in the end, what we worship. And the great mercy of God is that He does not ask first for our accomplishments or our talents, but for our hearts. Once He possesses that, everything else slowly begins to find its proper place. And that, perhaps, is the secret of the saints. They were not extraordinary because they did extraordinary things. They simply loved the right thing most.With all the said, listen again to the words of Jesus in the Gospel passage this Sunday, with fresh ears. We understand the reason why he says what he says on a deeper level: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” So again let me ask you, who is the love of your life? --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

Whenever I look at the photograph on the cover of this Sunday's bulletin, I am filled with many emotions at once—happiness, gratitude, nostalgia, and also a deep sadness. It was taken in the fall of 2009 in Rome. We had gathered at a restaurant to celebrate the ordination of a friend. There was good wine, wonderful Italian food, and the easy laughter. The joy on our faces tells the story better than words.At the time, everyone in the picture was still a seminarian, studying together for the priesthood. One of the great gifts of living in Rome, at the heart of the Catholic Church, is that you begin to see with your own eyes how truly universal the Church is. Men come from every corner of the world. In that photograph alone are seminarians from different parts of the United States, along with brothers from Iraq and Syria. Around that table, we were many nations, but one family.And this is where the memory makes me sad. In the upper left-hand corner, with the circle around his face, is Mikele, then a seminarian from Syria. We became friends through our classes and over many conversations shared with cappuccinos during breaks. From time to time, he would come to the American seminary where we lived and join us for lunch. After our years of study, we all returned to our own countries to serve Christ and His Church as priests. For a long time I heard nothing of Fr. Mikele. Then one day, quite unexpectedly, a mutual friend called me. “I have terrible news,” he said. “Do you remember Fr. Mikele from seminary? He has been kidnapped by terrorists.”I was stunned. Such things seem very far removed from our lives here in America, thanks be to God. Yet for many Christians throughout the world, they are terrible realities.Fr. Mikele had been delivering supplies to one of our Catholic schools in Damascus, the capital of Syria, where the Islamic terrorist group Hezbollah was active. Though the danger was well known, he and other Catholics boarded a bus bound for the city. Along the way, armed men stopped the vehicle. They climbed aboard with rifles in their hands and slowly made their way down the aisle. Looking upon the frightened faces of the passengers, they pointed to the two Catholic priests, Fr. Mikele being one of them, and dragged them off the bus.Not long afterward, the Archbishop of Damascus received a call demanding a ransom for the release of his priests. With great sorrow, he refused, knowing that yielding to such demands would only encourage further kidnappings. Fr. Mikele's mother pleaded for her son's freedom, but there was nothing she could do. The kidnappers wanted money—more money than anyone possessed.Then, one day, the calls ceased. There was only silence. It has now been more than a decade since anyone has heard from Fr. Mikele. No letters. No messages. No word at all. Sadly, we must presume the worst.I tell this story because my friend's name will never appear in the headlines. He was not a famous man. He was a simple Catholic priest trying to serve his people in a dangerous part of the Lord's vineyard. He was a good man, a prayerful man, and a man who loved Our Lord with his whole heart. Fr. Mikele reminds me of the words of Our Lord in this Sunday's Gospel:“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.… Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father's knowledge.… So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.”The world may forget such men. Newspapers may never print their names. But Heaven does not forget them. The Father who counts the hairs on our heads has surely not forgotten one of His faithful servants. And whether Fr. Mikele died at the hands of his captors or still lives in some hidden place known only to God, we may be certain of this: no act of love offered to Christ is ever lost, and no servant who acknowledges Him before men will be forgotten by the Master whom he served. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

So do not worry and say, 'What are we to eat?'or 'What are we to drink?' or 'What are we to wear?'All these things the pagans seek.Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.But seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness,and all these things will be given you besides.Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself.Sufficient for a day is its own evil." -Matthew 6:25-34 --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

It is one of the curious habits of God that He delights in beginning immense things with what appear to us very small beginnings. When Our Lord walked beside the Sea of Galilee and summoned twelve ordinary men to follow Him, Heaven itself was not improvising. This was no afterthought. The calling of the Twelve was the unfolding of a design hidden in the heart of God from the foundation of the world.For the Lord who chose twelve disciples was the same God who had once chosen twelve tribes through the sons of Jacob. Israel had been called to gather the nations to the worship of the true God, yet now, in Christ, a new and greater Israel was being formed. The number itself was no accident. Jesus was gathering around Himself the beginnings of the Church, the family through whom the Father intended to bring salvation to the ends of the earth.What is particularly astonishing is not merely that He called twelve men, but that He called such men. Fishermen, tax collectors, and zealots are hardly the material from which one would expect a kingdom to be built. Yet God has always preferred to display His strength through human weakness, so that the glory might be seen to belong to Him and not to His instruments.The Twelve would become apostles, the first bishops of the Catholic Church, entrusted with teaching, sanctifying, and guiding the people of God. Through their ministry, and through those who succeeded them, the voice of Christ would continue to echo across the centuries. Thus, the Church is not an invention of men but the continuation of the Lord's own work in human history.And perhaps there is a lesson here for each of us. Christ did not merely call twelve men long ago; He continues to call souls today. The same divine voice that summoned Peter from his nets summons us from our distractions and our little kingdoms. For God's great purpose has always been the same: to gather His scattered children into communion with Himself, until the whole world becomes, at last, one family in the household of the Father.Such is the strange and marvelous way of God. He begins with twelve, and intends nothing less than the redemption of the world. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

If we want to delve the depths of the Christian life, silence is a nonnegotiable. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

To enter into the mystery of the Eucharist – this baffling teaching that Jesus is truly and fully present in the “bread” and “wine” at each Holy Mass – one thing is required above all else: love. For love is not merely an affection; it is a kind of sight. It enables us to look through things rather than merely at them. Without love, we remain trapped upon the surface of reality, mistaking appearances for the whole truth.Consider a bride and groom standing before one another on their wedding day. The guests may admire the elegance of the dress or the sharpness of the suit, but the true spectacle is elsewhere. It is written upon their faces. Their eyes are fixed upon one another with a gaze that seems almost to forget the rest of the world. To everyone else, the man is simply a man and the woman simply a woman—a son, a daughter, a friend, a relative. Yet to the lovers themselves, something more is revealed. Love has uncovered a depth invisible to the casual observer. They behold in one another a mystery, a significance, a glory that others can only dimly perceive.Love, then, is not a departure from reality but an entrance into it.This sheds light upon our Lord's question to His disciples: “Who do you say that I am?” One might paraphrase it: What do you see when you look at Me? The crowd had their answers. Some said John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. Their answers were not entirely wrong, but they remained upon the surface. They saw only what natural sight could perceive.Then Peter spoke. By a grace granted from above, he looked beyond the ordinary features of the carpenter from Nazareth and exclaimed, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Peter had begun to see with the eyes of love. He perceived that the man standing before him was infinitely more than a man. Just as the bride sees more than a man in her beloved, Peter saw more than humanity in Jesus. He saw divinity concealed beneath humility.The same question confronts us whenever we stand before the Eucharist.What do you see?Everything in our senses protests against the mystery. The eye sees bread. The tongue tastes bread and wine. The appearances remain stubbornly ordinary. Yet Christ's words in the sixth chapter of John's Gospel continue to confront every generation with the same unsettling challenge: “My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.” Many who heard Him could bear it no longer. They turned away, preferring a faith that remained within the boundaries of what could be easily understood.Then Jesus asked the Twelve the question that every lover dreads to hear: “Do you also wish to go away?” Love never compels. It invites. It leaves room for refusal.Peter's answer is one of the great declarations of love in all Scripture: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Notice that Peter does not claim to understand everything. He remains because he has come to know the One who stands before him. Love has carried him beyond mere appearances. He trusts the Person even when the mystery exceeds his understanding.And so the question remains for us.When you gaze upon the Eucharist, what do you see? Mere bread? A religious symbol? Or do you see, hidden beneath the veil of ordinary things, the relentless love of God pursuing His lost children? The saints saw Christ there—giving Himself without reserve, pouring Himself out for the life of the world.What do you see? --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

When following Jesus to the full, the Christian life always leaves scars. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

This October, I'm excited to welcome a remarkable guest whose work has helped countless souls all over the world rediscover the splendor hidden within the Christian vision of the human person. Internationally known Catholic speaker and author Christopher West, perhaps the most beloved popular interpreter of the teachings of St. John Paul II on the Theology of the Body, will come to share anew the good news of why God created us male and female, and why the Church, so often misunderstood, speaks not to imprison the human heart, but to set it free. The event here at our parish is called “The Well”, named after that famous pivotal encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4.For we live in an age overflowing with information yet starving for meaning; an age that has taught many to look upon the body with confusion, suspicion, or even despair. Yet Christ does not leave us wandering in that fog. He reveals a path toward freedom, toward wholeness, toward the rediscovery of what it means to be truly human.And perhaps this raises a deeper question – why does Jesus seek us out? Imagine, for a moment, the eyes of Jesus fixed upon you. What do you see there? Why does His gaze unsettle us? We know the strange discomfort of holding the gaze of another person too long — the uncertainty of what lies hidden behind their eyes, whether judgment or affection, indifference or intimacy. Yet Christ's gaze is unlike any other. He looks upon us fully, without turning away. Not merely at our virtues, but at our wounds; not merely at the face we present to the world, but at the soul beneath it.This Sunday the Church celebrates Holy Trinity Sunday, this strange and bewildering teaching that God is an eternal relationship at his very core and wants us to share in it. The heart of Christianity is not merely that man seeks God, but that God Himself has gone in search of man. From all eternity the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have lived in a boundless communion of love, lacking nothing, needing nothing, yet desiring to share that divine life with us. And so the Son stepped down into the dark forest of our world, clothed Himself in our humanity, and walked our dusty roads that we might be drawn into the very life of the Trinity. Christ does not simply come to improve us morally, but to bring us home, to gather wandering souls into the blazing circle of divine love where the Father delights in the Son, and the Spirit binds all together in eternal joy. The Gospel, then, is the astonishing invitation that frail creatures like ourselves might one day participate in the very communion of God. That is why Jesus went to that well and encountered that woman. That is why Jesus looks intensely at each one of us. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

"You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own..."? -1 Peter 2:9 --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

Jesus calls us out of darkness. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

Be wildly generous with God. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

There is, at present, a certain astonishment rippling through the secular world at the announcement that Scott-Vincent Borba will be ordained a Catholic priest for the Diocese of Fresno on Saturday, May 24th. Here is a man who possessed precisely what modern man is taught to desire above all things: wealth, influence, admiration, and the peculiar sort of immortality granted by worldly success. As co-founder of E.L.F., a cosmetic empire valued in the billions, he had climbed the glittering staircase that so many spend their lives ascending. Yet, having reached its summit, he quietly descended it again for the sake of Christ.To the modern imagination, this appears madness. The world can understand a man sacrificing comfort in order to gain riches; it cannot understand a man surrendering riches because he has discovered something infinitely greater. And yet, this is the very heart of Christianity. The soul of man was never made to feed forever upon applause, luxury, or power. These things may amuse us for an evening, as toys amuse a child, but they cannot satisfy the ancient hunger hidden within us.When Borba says, “I've never been happier,” the world hears a contradiction. But the Christian hears an echo of a deeper truth: that joy is never found by clutching at oneself, but by surrendering oneself. Christ warned that whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses it for His sake will find it. It is one of those divine paradoxes upon which the whole Christian faith rests.Perhaps, then, the shocking thing is not that a man gave away billions for Christ. Perhaps the truly shocking thing is that we still believe billions could ever compare to Him. There are moments in life when a man discovers, often unwillingly, that information alone cannot remake him. One may memorize creeds, recite prayers, and speak eloquently of heaven while the heart remains cold as a winter field. Yet Christianity was never meant to be merely the arrangement of correct thoughts in the mind, but the invasion of divine life into the soul. The Holy Spirit does not simply instruct a man; He transforms him.The Holy Spirit moves much like the wind: invisible, untamed, impossible to imprison. We see Him not directly, but in the changed lives He leaves behind. Hard hearts soften. Cynics begin to hope. The selfish learn charity. What no lecture could accomplish in twenty years, God may perform in a single surrendered moment. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

There are moments, I think, when nearly every Christian has envied the Twelve Apostles. We imagine that faith would be simpler if only Christ stood visibly before us as He once stood beside St. Peter and St. Andrew by the sea or walked with the disciples on the road to Emmaus. We think to ourselves: “Surely I should be a braver Christian if I could hear His voice with my own ears. Surely sorrow would lose some of its sting if I could look upon His face and say plainly, ‘Lord, help me.'”And so the Ascension, the great mystery which the Church celebrates this Sunday, can, at first glance, appear a rather melancholy feast. For it speaks of departure. Christ is taken from sight. The disciples remain below, gazing upward like helpless children watching the sun disappear over the horizon. Yet that is only how it appears from the earth. We are creatures of space and time, and therefore we naturally suppose that if Christ were standing three feet away from us, then He would be more present than He is now. But the story of the Ascension tells us precisely the opposite.For while Christ remained on earth in the flesh, His bodily presence was necessarily limited. He could be in Galilee or Jerusalem, but not both at once. But by ascending to the Father in Heaven, He did not abandon the world any more than the sun abandons the earth when it sets in the evening twilight. Rather, He ceased to be present merely as one man among others and became present in a deeper way to all who belong to Him.This is why Pope Leo the Great could say in the 5th century that “what was visible in our Redeemer has passed into the sacraments.” The visible Christ has not vanished; He has, in a sense, hidden Himself. Hidden—not absent. The same Lord who once healed with His hands now heals through water, bread, wine, absolution, and the quiet workings of grace within His Church.Indeed, the Ascension was not Christ withdrawing from human life but drawing humanity upward into the life of God. The Son returned to the Father carrying our nature with Him. Human flesh, the very thing so often wounded, tempted, and humiliated, now sits enthroned in Heaven. One might almost say that the Ascension is Heaven's declaration that humanity has not been discarded after all. Man is not merely a beastly brute, bred for earthly banality, but destined for the heavenly beatific vision of eternal blissful bewilderment. This is why the sacraments matter so profoundly. In the Eucharist, Christ does not merely remind us of Himself; He gives Himself. In Baptism, we do not simply enact a symbol; we are united with His death and resurrection. In Confession, it is not only a man who speaks forgiveness, but Christ Himself who restores the wounded soul. The modern man often says, “If only I could see, then I would believe.” But Christianity turns the sentence upside down. We learn, gradually and painfully, that sight is not the highest form of knowing. Love itself teaches us this. The deepest realities are often those we cannot hold in our hands. And so the Ascension calls us away from the childish notion that God is absent unless He is visible. Christ is not less near because He cannot now be touched. He is nearer than ever—nearer than our own thoughts, nearer than breath itself. The disciples stood looking into Heaven because they thought the story was ending. In truth, it was only then beginning. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

Christianity is not chiefly a matter of mastering a catalogue of sacred facts, as though Heaven were won by passing an examination. A man may memorize every creed and yet remain as cold as stone before God. The heart of the Christian life is rather a love affair — the creature pursued by his Creator, the soul awakened by the terrible and beautiful love of Christ. For information alone may sharpen the mind, but only love can transform the person. The saints were not those who merely knew about God, but those who had become, in the deepest sense, enamored with Him. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

In our first reading today, St. Paul arrives in the throbbing heart of Greek culture --Athens. We will witness man's ancient pursuit of truth converge with the revelation of Jerusalem. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY! What a radiant and holy custom it is that, here in the United States, we set aside a day in honor of our mothers. And rightly so.Consider what she endures for the sake of her child. Long before we first behold the light of the sun, we are carried beneath her heart, hidden within her very being for those mysterious nine months in which life itself is woven together in secret. And then comes the hour of birth — that fearful and glorious threshold where she willingly passes through suffering, and even the shadow of death, so that another life may enter the world.Nor does her giving cease when the travail is ended. Having poured out her strength, she continues to sustain the child from the substance of her own body, feeding the helpless little one with nourishment only she can give. It is a love so profound and sacrificial that one is almost compelled to hear, echoing faintly through it, the words: “This is my body, given for you.” The cover of this Sunday's bulletin recalls the radiant joy of last Sunday's First Holy Communion. The young girls, clothed in garments of brilliant white, and the boys, with ties neatly fastened and collars straightened, came not merely to a ceremony, but to a profound divine encounter. For what greater marvel can be given to mankind than this: that God should feed His children with His very life? Not symbol alone, nor distant memory, but His Body offered for the life of the world. Yes — His flesh; His Body.First Holy Communion ought therefore to be celebrated with trembling gladness and with majesty befitting heaven itself. The child approaching the altar steps nearer to the heart of the universe than kings upon their thrones or conquerors in their triumphs. Here is Love made tangible. Here is Eternity stooping low to nourish the weary children of earth.And so we celebrate this sacred feast much as we celebrate Mother's Day because both bear witness to self-giving love. Every Mass is another encounter with that divine charity which spends itself entirely for the beloved. Christ desires nothing less than union with each soul. At every reception of Holy Communion, He whispers again the words that shattered history and remade the world: “This is my body, given for you.”That is why we Catholics genuflect. The bending of the knee is not mere habit, nor empty ritual, but a holy reminder to distracted minds and wandering hearts: Love Himself is here. In the Holy Eucharist we stand in the presence of the living God, who still gives Himself away for the life of His people: “This is my body, given for you.” --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

The words of Jesus punched me in the face. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

“I CAN'T WAIT!” said fifteen-year-old Jayden, his face bright with a wide and eager smile as he looked toward his First Holy Communion this Sunday. The joy in him was hard to miss; it seemed to spread to anyone near him. Wanting to understand it, I asked, “Why are you so excited?”“All my life I was just a Christian, not living my faith very well. There was so much uncertainty. Then I discovered Catholicism and I started learning more and more. I learned that we truly believe that Jesus is really present in the Eucharist! I want to be with Him so bad!” Then, with tears gathering in his eyes, he asked, “Why doesn't everyone want to receive Jesus in the Eucharist father?”To see such a fire of love for Jesus in one so young was a gift, even to an old priest. It is a curious thing: those who have long been in the Church can grow used to her treasures, as a man might grow used to the light of the sun and forget to marvel at it. We begin to take for granted what is, in truth, both strange and wonderful. And so it often happens that someone new, seeing with fresh eyes, reminds us of what we had nearly forgotten.Why genuflecting before we enter the church pew is important: There is, in the small and easily neglected act of genuflection, something of a quiet rebellion against the modern habit of forgetting what is directly before us. We are creatures prone to abstraction, speaking of a God in the clouds while overlooking Him, so to speak, in the room. To bend the knee before the tabernacle is to correct this imbalance, not by argument, but by posture. The body confesses what the lips are often too hurried or too timid to declare: that here, in this place, Jesus is present who deserves not a nod of acknowledgment, but an act of humble reverence.It is a useful thing, I think, that the gesture is physical and unmistakable. For Christianity is not merely an arrangement of ideas but an encounter with reality. If one truly believes that Christ is present, not symbolically, not sentimentally, but really, then some outward sign must follow as naturally as kneeling before a king or standing at the edge of a great precipice. It aligns the body with the truth the soul professes.And there is, too, the matter of witness. We do not perform this act for an audience, and yet it cannot help but be seen. In a world where belief is often treated as a private eccentricity, such a gesture stands quietly but firmly in contradiction. It says, without a word, that something—or rather Someone—of immense consequence is here. To the unbeliever, it may appear curious, even unnecessary. But curiosity is no small beginning. A bent knee may raise a question, and a question, honestly pursued, may open the door to grace as it did young Jayden.Thus the simple act, repeated countless times, becomes both remembrance and proclamation: a reminder to ourselves that we stand on holy ground, and a sign to others that we do not merely speak of mysteries—we encounter them. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

Let our Heavenly Father do the heavy lifting. --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian's homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give