Fr. Brian Soliven Sunday Sermons

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

Remember, we bend the knee as Catholics, before we enter a church pew. It's one of the weird things we do in our religion. We genuflect, bowing humbly before a mysterious presence in the Tabernacle. Once we know who is there, we cannot help but get on one knee. There is, in the human mind, a peculiar restlessness—a kind of noble discontent—which refuses to be satisfied with fragments. We gather ideas as a squirrel gathers acorns, yet find that no collection, however glittering, can quiet the deeper hunger. It is not merely that we wish to know many things, but that we long, however dimly, to know the thing: the unifying truth in which all lesser truths find their meaning.Standing before Raphael's famous fresco painting in Vatican City, the Disputation of the Holy Sacrament (gloriously depicted on the Sunday's bulletin) one is struck first by its harmony. The scene is divided, yet not divided: heaven above, earth below, and between them no chasm but a communion. The theologians and philosophers on earth bend over their books, gesture in argument, and strain toward understanding. Above them, in serene clarity, the heavenly host of saints and angels gather together.For above them stands Christ—not as one opinion among many, nor even as the conclusion of a syllogism, but as the Truth in person. It is as though all the scattered rays of human thought converge in Him as in a single sun.This, I think, is the great scandal and the great relief of Christianity: that Truth is not merely something we grasp, but Someone who grasps us. Our intellects, for all their rigor, are like instruments that can tune themselves only imperfectly. They require a fixed pitch outside themselves. In the figure of Christ, Raphael gives us that pitch, not abstract, not cold, but living and radiant.The Eucharist at the center of the composition anchors this vision in a startling way. It is not placed among the clouds, but firmly on the altar, within reach of human sight and touch. Here, the highest truth does not remain aloof, but descends into the ordinary. The same Christ who is adored in glory above is present, quietly and mysteriously, below. The suggestion is unmistakable: the truth our minds seek is not only to be contemplated, but to be received.And so the fresco becomes a kind of map of the soul. We begin among the disputants, armed with questions and sharpened by doubt. We look upward, perhaps with uncertainty, perhaps with longing. But if we follow the movement of the whole, we discover that the journey is not merely from ignorance to knowledge, but from searching to encounter.In the end, the intellect does not lose its dignity by kneeling; it fulfills it. For to recognize Truth when it stands before you is not the abandonment of reason, but its crowning achievement. And in that recognition, the restless mind finds, at last, its proper rest. --- 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 the turning of Paul the Apostle on the road to Damascus, as told in the Acts of the Apostles. Here was a man set firmly against the Church, his course decided, his purpose clear—yet in a moment, the very current of his life was seized and redirected by a higher hand. What seemed fixed proved fluid; what appeared hostile became chosen. If such a transformation can stand at the heart of history, then history itself is not abandoned to chaos but guided by a providence wiser than our fears. The same Father who met Saul in his blindness sees beyond our present uncertainties. Therefore, we need not tremble before the future, as though it were an unwatched road; it is already known, already held, and—mysteriously, but surely—already being shaped toward His good purposes. --- 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

St. Padre Pio famously said, "Pray, Hope, and Don't Worry!" Remember, Jesus is orchestrating world events. --- 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

Do not let your hearts be troubled. --- 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

“What is truth?” This question was posed by Pontius Pilate in Gospel of John 18:38 as he interrogated Our Lord shortly before His brutal execution. It is a question at once poignant in its aim, sharp in its focus, and profound in its depth—and one that is far from new to humanity.From the moment we first gazed upon the stars in the night sky, we have stood in awe of our surroundings, seeking answers to the deepest questions of existence. The human intellect, by its very nature, strives to apprehend and understand reality; indeed, our minds hunger for it. Truth, simply defined, is “what actually is.” Modern man, unfortunately, gleefully defies this definition. He likes to say, “truth is relative”. There is no objective truth to reality. Truth is what I say it is, and how dare you Christian, try to impose your truth on others. Consider, dear friends, the image placed before us on the parish bulletin. It stands in quiet contrast to the spirit of defiance we so often encounter. It is the renowned fresco by Raphael, painted within the halls of the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City (just a few doors down from the Sistine Chapel) between 1509 and 1511. This masterpiece, known as The School of Athens, gathers together the greatest minds of the ancient world.There we see Ptolemy holding the sphere of the earth, striving to map the movements of the heavens. Nearby stands Pythagoras, immersed in numbers and harmony. And Socrates, ever the questioner, engages in dialogue, seeking truth through reason.Yet, our eyes are drawn, almost irresistibly, to the center, where two towering figures stand: Plato and Aristotle. Plato gestures upward, toward the heavens, teaching that truth lies beyond, in the realm of eternal forms. Aristotle, in contrast, extends his hand toward the earth, reminding us that truth is also found here, in the physical world we can touch and see with our senses.What a testimony this is to the human longing for truth—to the relentless pursuit of what is real, what is good, what is eternal. The Greeks sought truth with passion, with discipline, with all the power of the human mind. And yet, my brothers and sisters, this is where the story does not end but where it is fulfilled.For into this great human search steps Jesus Christ.In the Gospel this Sunday, we encounter the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Like those philosophers of old, they too were seekers. They had placed their hope in Jesus. They believed they had found the truth. But then came the scandal of the crucifixion… and with it, confusion, sorrow, and doubt. Their hopes seemed shattered.Or were they?For the Risen Lord draws near. He walks beside them, though they do not yet recognize Him. And in that sacred encounter, He reveals something astonishing: that truth is not merely an idea to be grasped, nor a theory to be proven but a Person to be encountered.A truth more profound, more mysterious, and more beautiful than anything they could have ever imagined. --- 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 was a glorious morning, as over a hundred of St. Mary's faithful and hearty parishioners ascended the hill at Caligiuri Ranch in the darkness for what has become a popular Easter tradition – the 6AM Sunrise Mass. Crowned on its peak is a huge life-sized wooden cross overlooking the wide expanse of the Central Valley. A soft hazy midst still draping the farmfields in the distance, adding to the mystical drama of the reason why were there to celebrate. In the still darkness, the Holy Mass begins. As we move to the Eucharist, the timing of it all is absolutely perfect. “Take this all of you… and eat of it. This is my Body giving up for you.” At the sacred words of consecration, where the risen Jesus Christ is made perfectly present, the sun begins to crest the Sierra Mountains bursting its warm rays of light (This moment is captured on the front page of our Sunday Bulletin). Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead. All creation proclaims its glory! The Resurrection changes everything. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ changes everything. Upon this one single doctrine of our Christian religion, the entire 2,000 year old edifice of the Catholic Church is built. If Jesus is still dead, then St. Paul is absolutely correct: “ if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, your faith also is in vain.” (Cf. 1 Corinthians 15:14). We should all go home. However, we proclaim the tomb is empty! He lives, just as our Lord promised us he would. That means we are no longer enslaved to death and sin. This Sunday, now known as Divine Mercy Sunday, we encounter the unfathomable greatness of God. There is no sin so heinous, so foul, for God to turn his face away from us.Man is too often inclined to take his measure from the shadows he casts rather than from the light that first gave him form. Yet it is not our sinfulness that defines us, as though we were creatures born merely to fail, but rather our astonishing capacity to receive the Father's love—a love that precedes, outlasts, and quietly overthrows every fault through the death and resurrection of our Lord. For the soul, even when bent and burdened, remains fashioned for the communion of the Eternal Love of the Trinity, not condemnation. --- 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 Christian Bold! --- 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 how easily we grow accustomed to the dull weight of the world, as though sorrow were the final word, as though death were the great period at the end of every sentence. We live, most of us, as if the story is already written in ink that cannot be altered. The tears of Good Friday, we think, is simply how things are.But then… there is Easter.The Resurrection is not merely a happy ending tacked onto a tragic tale. It is the great reversal, the divine interruption. It is, if you like, the Author Himself stepping onto the stage and insisting that the play shall not end in darkness after all. Death, which seemed so solid, so inevitable, is revealed to be a door—and not a locked one.If Christ is risen, then everything we assumed to be ultimate is, in fact, provisional. Sin is not the final master. Suffering is not meaningless. Even death itself has been, as it were, hollowed out from the inside. The worst thing is never the last thing.This changes not only our destination, but our present. For if death has been defeated, then fear need not govern us like before. We are freed, freed to love recklessly, to forgive extravagantly, to hope stubbornly in places where hope seems absurd. The Resurrection does not remove the wounds of the world; rather, it transforms them. The scars remain, but they shine iridescently. St. Augustine discovered this in the 4th century, when he famously exclaimed, “In my deepest wound I saw your glory and it dazzled me.” And here is the most astonishing part: the Resurrection is not merely something that happened to Christ; it is something that happens to us. We are invited into it. The new life is not postponed until some distant heaven; it has already begun, quietly, like dawn spreading across the Central Valley, once suffocated by dense tule fog.So we must ask ourselves: do we still live as though the tomb is sealed? Or have we begun to live as though it is empty?For if it is empty—and it is—then everything has changed. --- 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 all have a price, if we're humbly honest. For Judas today, it was thirty pieces of shiny silver coins. --- 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 all have the same, understandable reaction to suffering – RUN! We want to flee from it, make it stop, numb it, ignore it, avoid it at all costs. Not our God. Palm Sunday forces us to confront pain in an altogether ridiculous way. Here is Jesus Christ, riding into Jerusalem, not as one swept along by circumstance, but as one who has already read the final chapter and chooses, nonetheless, to walk straight into it. He knows what awaits Him. Let us not soften it. Betrayal by a friend. False accusations. Public humiliation. Torture. Death of the most cruel and calculated kind. And yet He goes.Now if this were mere ignorance, we might pity Him. If it were compulsion, we might mourn Him. But it is neither. It is, rather, laser-like intention.The crowd, as you know, cried out in celebration. They spread their cloaks and waved branches, as though a king had come at last to banish their troubles. And indeed, a King had come but not the sort they imagined. For this King does not deal with suffering by issuing decrees against it, nor by remaining safely beyond its reach. He deals with it by entering it.He rides, as it were, into the very razor-sharp mouth of the dragon.He does not wait for suffering to come to Him unbidden. He goes to it. He advances toward it. He places Himself in its path with full knowledge of its cost. In a world where we spend our days avoiding pain, postponing it, disguising it; He alone walks deliberately into its center.Do you see what this means?It means there is no sorrow you carry into which He has not already gone. No grief so deep, no darkness so thick, that He stands outside it, arms folded, offering advice. He is there—wounded, yes, but present. And more than present: active.For by entering suffering, He begins the work of undoing it. Not by skirting its edges, but by breaking its power from within. Like a fire that consumes the rot at the heart of a tree, He takes into Himself what would otherwise destroy us and in doing so, He robs it of its final victory.So when you think of Palm Sunday, do not think merely of celebration. Think of courage. Think of resolve. Think of a King who sees the cross at the end of the road and rides on anyway.For that is how He deals with the suffering of humanity,not by avoiding it, not by explaining it away, but by entering it fully, confronting it utterly, and, at last, redeeming it from the inside out with compassionate 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

It's abundantly clear now what the Jewish authorities must do to Jesus. --- 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

Can you find your own pain on the cross? --- 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 homily was recorded at our 2PM Traditional Latin Mass A few days ago, I was called to the home of a parishioner to administer the Anointing of the Sick and bring Holy Communion—those sacred prayers we often refer to as the “Last Rites,” which prepare the soul to stand before the judgment seat of God. As I left that home, a single thought lingered in my heart: I think I may have just anointed a saint.I rang the doorbell, and her husband greeted me warmly. “Thank you for coming,” he said, extending his hand. “She'll be so happy to see you.” Because of her fragile immune system, we both put on our masks. He led me down the hallway, and as I walked, my eyes were drawn to the family photographs lining the walls, faces radiant with wide, joyful smiles. This was clearly a family that knew how to love, and how to rejoice.Yet as we approached the bedroom, a familiar weight settled in my chest. I have walked this path many times as a priest, and still, it never becomes easier. Behind that door, one never knows what awaits—sorrow, anger, tears… or perhaps all three at once.I stepped inside. The curtains were drawn, and a soft, diffused light filled the room, casting a quiet warmth over everything. On the nightstand stood a wooden statue of the Blessed Mother, watching gently over her.She greeted me with a reverence that was both humbling and profound. “Father!” she said, her voice trembling as her teeth chattered uncontrollably. The effects of her medication left her alternating between fever and chilling cold. Her husband tenderly draped another blanket over her, layering warmth upon warmth. The cancer had weakened her, yes but it seemed the treatment itself had exacted an even harsher toll.We spoke briefly about a pilgrimage she and her husband had made to Lourdes the year before, where they had begged the Blessed Mother for a miracle. That miracle had not come; at least, not in the way they had hoped.She lifted her eyes heavenward and said softly, “My only hope is that I'm ready, Father. I don't want to be separated…”At first, I thought she meant her children. But she continued, “I don't want to be separated from Our Lord. I cannot bear even the thought of Purgatory. I just want to see Him… at last.”Her teeth trembled again, yet somehow she managed a smile, fragile, but radiant. “You're always in my prayers, Father.”I found myself in awe of souls like hers. While the world rushes on in all its noise and urgency, there are hidden lives—quiet, unseen—bearing their own Calvary. Right here, in Vacaville.She is like Lazarus from the Gospel, a figure of suffering in the eyes of the world. To many, a life like hers seems only tragic, stripped of purpose. But they do not see what lies beneath. They do not see the mysterious power of God at work even here, even within suffering. Yes, there is a hidden power in the cross she carries.In the end, when we stand before Jesus Christ, it will not be appearances that matter, but the life we have truly lived.And so I ask myself—and you: which one do you wish to be?As for me, I pray that I may be like that beautiful soul I encountered—lying in that bed, shivering beneath her blankets, her body wasting away… yet her heart wholly fixed on 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

Brothers, what defines a great man? Today's solemnity that we celebrate gives us a perfect example. --- 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

Bored? Jesus provides an alternative answer to the "quiet desperation" that many of us feel. --- 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 mercy in the way Our Lord heals. We, in our modern cleverness, are often inclined to imagine that healing ought to be immediate, painless, and, above all, understandable. Yet in the Gospel we encounter something altogether different: a healing that begins in mystery, passes through obedience, and ends in sight. It's the restoration of not merely the eyes, but even more magnificently the soul.Consider the man born blind whom Christ meets on the roadside. The disciples, like many of us, are preoccupied with explanations: Who sinned? Who is to blame? But Our Lord will not be trapped in that small courtroom of human reasoning. Instead, He stoops to the ground, makes clay, anoints the blind man's eyes, and sends him to wash in the Pool of Siloam.Now this is a strange prescription if one pauses to think about it. Mud upon the eyes does not look like medicine; it looks rather like further blindness. And yet the man obeys. He goes to the pool, washes, and returns seeing.Here we begin to glimpse a truth that is as unsettling as it is hopeful: the true source of healing is not the pool, nor the clay, nor even the man's obedience in itself. The source is Christ. The pool is merely the place where trust meets grace.Many of us wander through life rather like that blind man though we seldom admit it. Our sight may be sharp enough to read the morning paper, but we stumble in darker matters: forgiveness, meaning, love, hope. We seek remedies in every direction—self-improvement, distraction, ambition—yet find that none quite reaches the deeper wound.For the soul's blindness is not cured by clearer information. It is cured by encounter.Christ does not merely instruct the blind man; He touches him. And that touch begins a process. First comes the clay, then the journey, then the washing, then the sight. In much the same way, the healing of the human soul rarely arrives as a sudden bolt of lightning. More often it comes disguised as small acts of trust: a prayer whispered in uncertainty, a forgiveness offered when it is undeserved, a step taken toward God when we can hardly see the road ahead.Indeed, the curious thing is that Christ often places clay upon our eyes before He gives us sight. He allows circumstances that confuse us, humble us, even darken our view of ourselves. Yet these moments are not evidence of His absence but of His craftsmanship. The Great Physician is preparing the eyes of the heart.And when at last we wash, when we surrender our cleverness and come honestly before Him, we begin to see. Not perfectly, not all at once, but truly. We see that we are known and loved.We see that grace was at work long before we recognized it. And, most astonishing of all, we begin to see Christ Himself.The pool of Siloam was never the final destination. It was only the place where the blind man discovered that the One who sent him there was, in fact, the Light of the World. And so it remains. Every true healing of the soul begins and ends in Him. For Christ does not merely restore sight; He gives us a new way of seeing altogether. --- 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's non-negotiable. If we want God to forgive us, we must forgive those who have hurt us. But how? In today's Gospel, our Lord teaches us the secret so that true healing can begin. --- 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 in every human heart an empty chamber which echoes. We attempt to furnish it with wealth, romances, fancy job titles, and little private kingdoms of our own making; yet the echo remains blaring. We are rather like children who, having been promised the sea, are content to paddle in rain-filled ditches. The tragedy is not that our desires are too strong, but that they are too easily satisfied with the fragility of the world's delights. We flee from God; maybe not always with clenched fists, but often with busy hands. We build, we acquire, we admire ourselves in mirrors held up by other people we so eagerly try to impress. And all the while there is a thirst—persistent, unembarrassed, and immune to flattery. We name it ambition, or love, or freedom. But it returns in the quiet hours as a dryness of soul.Consider the woman at the well in the Gospel of John. At high noon, the Gospel tells us, an hour when respectable company is kept indoors, she comes alone to draw water. She has sought her portion of fulfillment in the arms of five husbands and now in a sixth relationship not sanctified by God. One can almost hear the echo in her heart sloshing louder than the water in her empty jar.Yet there, seated wearily upon the stones of Jacob's well, is Jesus. He does not wait for her to ascend into moral respectability. He does not send her away to tidy her history. He asks her simply for a drink. It is a curious God who makes Himself thirsty for us.He speaks to her of “living water”—a spring that does not depend upon the depth of our wells nor the sturdiness of our ropes. She has come for something to carry home; instead, she is offered something that will carry her. And when He gently unveils the catalogue of her broken loves, it is not to shame her but to show her that He has traced every path she has taken to avoid Him—and has arrived there first.We are all, in some fashion, that woman. We lower our buckets into relationships, achievements, and earthly pleasures, hoping at last to hear the satisfying splash. But the water drawn from such wells must be drawn again tomorrow. Only the water Christ gives becomes in us a refreshing spring.The marvel is not merely that we seek substitutes; that is the oldest of human habits. The marvel is that Christ continues to cross Samaria for us. He passes deliberately through the territories respectable people avoid. He sits beside the wells of our compromise and waits for us in the heat of our own making.And when at last we are startled into recognition, when we perceive that the Stranger who knows us entirely is not scandalized by our sins, our worldly water jars fall forgotten at our feet. We run, as she did, not to hide our shame but to proclaim our discovery: that God loves us still and he has not abandoned us. The heart's chamber ceases to echo when it is inhabited. For the One we have been attempting to replace is the only One who refuses to be replaced—and who, in holy persistence, seeks us still. --- 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

Jealously can be a fierce emotion, causing us to dastardly, unimaginable things -- just look at the readings in today's Mass. Our precious Lord shows us the antidote. --- 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

For the first time Jesus in the Gospel passage predicts his torture and death. The response of his disciples is disappointing. --- 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 you look at Jesus, what do you see?It is a question that refuses to sit quietly in the corner of the mind. It presses forward. For to look at Jesus is not merely to observe a figure in history, nor to admire a moral teacher whose sayings decorate greeting cards. It is to stand before a Person who demands to be reckoned with.Some see only a carpenter's son: a man of dusty roads and rough hands, who spoke kindly to children and sternly to hypocrites. They see compassion, certainly; courage, perhaps; even genius. But nothing more. He becomes, in their sight, an admirable chap, someone nice and maybe wise.But if you look longer, if you allow the Gospels to speak without interruption, you begin to notice something unsettling. The authority in His voice is not borrowed. He does not argue as though piecing together secondhand truths; He speaks as though Truth were His native tongue. He forgives sins as though they were committed against Himself. He commands storms as one might quiet a restless dog. He speaks of God not merely as Father, but as His Father, in a manner that places Him on the very side of the throne.And then there is His humility.Here lies the great stumbling block and the great splendor. For if He were merely divine in the sense of distant and untouchable, we might admire Him from afar and remain unchanged. But this is a divinity wrapped in swaddling clothes, kneeling to wash feet, sweating blood in a garden. It is a majesty that stoops. A glory that bleeds. If this is not God, it is blasphemy of the highest order. If it is God, then we are looking at the very heart of reality.Can you see His divinity?It is not always visible in the way lightning is visible. Often it is more like the sun behind a veil of clouds, perceived not by staring at it directly, but by the way everything else is illuminated. Stand near Him long enough and you begin to see yourself more clearly: your pride, your hunger, your longing for a love you cannot manufacture. His presence exposes and heals in the same breath.To see His divinity is not merely to conclude that He is God. Even the demons, we are told, reached that conclusion. It is to behold in Him the startling claim that the Author of all things has written Himself into the story. That the Maker of the stars allowed nails to fasten Him to wood He Himself designed.When you look at Jesus, you are not simply looking at an example. You are looking at an invasion—heaven breaking into earth, mercy interrupting rebellion, love refusing to remain abstract.And here is the quiet wonder: the more clearly you see His divinity, the less crushed you feel by it. For this is not a cold omnipotence, but a wounded one. Not a tyrant's power, but a shepherd's. His divinity does not diminish His tenderness; it guarantees it.So I ask again: when you look at Jesus, what do you see?If you see only a teacher, you may admire Him. If you see only a martyr, you may pity Him. But if you see God—God with scars—then you will do something far more dangerous and far more glorious. You will worship. --- 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 today in the Gospel talks about one of the most mysterious and misunderstood Christian doctrines -- hell. --- 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 tells us simply -- never stop praying! --- 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 can sum up all of Salvation History as God's attempt to prove to humanity one simple fact -- that He is good. --- 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 Our Lord was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, it was not merely to endure hunger or solitude, as though sanctity were a matter of stoic self-denial. No, He went as a gladiator going into the Coliseum. The encounter with the devil was not an unfortunate interruption of His ministry; it was its opening engagement of hand-to-hand combat. Before He preached to crowds or healed the sick, He faced our ancient enemy on ground chosen by Divine Providence.We are much mistaken if we imagine the temptation in the desert to have been a private moral struggle, like a man wrestling with a troublesome habit. It was, rather, the clash of two kingdoms. The devil, that parasite of God's good creation, could offer nothing truly his own – only distortions of what the Father already delights to give. Bread without obedience. Power without suffering. Glory without the Cross. In each temptation there lies the same hissed suggestion: “Take the crown, and leave the thorns.”Here, then, is the great comfort and the great terror of Lent: we are not fighting alone, but we are truly fighting. The same enemy who dared to whisper to Christ will not scruple to whisper to us. The spiritual battle of Lent is not fought with grand gestures, but with small obediences. We fast, and discover how much of our supposed “need” is but appetite masquerading as necessity. We pray, and find how quickly our minds stray. We give alms, and feel the resistance of self-love. In each act we stand, in our measure, beside Christ in the desert, answering the tempter not with cleverness, but with trust.The devil's stratagem has always been to persuade us that God is withholding something essential, that obedience will diminish us, that surrender will impoverish us. Yet in the desert we see the opposite. It is precisely in refusing the shortcut that Christ prepares the true victory. What seems like deprivation becomes preparation; what feels like hunger becomes strength.And so Lent is no mere annual exercise in religious gloom. It is training for joy. We strip away the lesser loves, not because they are evil in themselves, but because they so easily become rivals to the Greatest Love. We learn that man does not live by bread alone, and that the Kingdom cannot be seized but must be received.Thus Lent is the Church's campaign season. We march not toward despair, but toward Easter. The wilderness is not our destination; it is our battleground. And because He has fought there before us—and triumphed—we may take courage. The devil's promises glitter; Christ's promises endure. In the end, it is not the tempter who has the last word, but the One who answered him and overcame. --- 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 you look at the eyes of Our Lord, 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

Lent is the holy season by which we willingly choose weakness over strength, pain over comfort, and the love of Jesus over my own will. --- 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

Lent is upon us! In this holy season, the Church asks us to purposely become weak. --- 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

With the approach of Ash Wednesday on February 18th, the Church once again does something both startling and merciful: she reminds us that we shall die.There is about this reminder a bracing honesty which our modern age sorely needs. We are encouraged, most days, to behave as though we were permanent fixtures in a very temporary world. We speak of plans and prospects, of improvements and entertainments, and seldom of endings. Yet on Ash Wednesday the priest marks our foreheads with ashes and speaks the plain truth: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” It is not cruelty. It is clarity. And clarity, in the hands of God, is always a form of kindness.Lent, then, is not a season for religious theatrics, but for reality. The Church calls us to consider the Four Last Things—Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell—not because she delights in severity, but because she desires our joy.Death is the great appointment we all keep. It is not an interruption of the story, but its turning page. For the Christian, death is not the collapse of meaning but its unveiling. The One we have trusted in shadows we shall meet face to face. To remember death is not to become morbid; it is to become wise. Only when we grasp that our days are numbered do we begin to truly live.Judgment, too, has been misunderstood. We imagine a cold tribunal and forget that judgment is the setting right of what has gone wrong. Every time we cry out against injustice, every time we long for truth to prevail, we are secretly longing for judgment. And the Judge is not a stranger but the very Christ who bore our sins. To stand before Him will be to stand before Love itself; it's a love that burns away falsehood and heals what we have surrendered to Him.Heaven and Hell stand as the two great possibilities before every human soul. Heaven is not a sentimental cloud, but the solid, blazing reality for which we were made. It is the fulfillment of every pure desire, the answer to every homesick ache we have ever felt in this world. Hell, on the other hand, is not so much a torture devised by God as the final monument to human refusal, the tragic end of a will that persistently says, “I will have my own way.” In the end, we are given what we have chosen.Lent is the season in which we are invited to choose again.Through prayer, we learn to desire God above lesser things. Through fasting, we discover how tightly we cling to what cannot save us. Through repentance, we unlock doors we have long kept barred. The ashes on our foreheads are not a sign of despair but of hope, hope that even dust may be raised to glory. As February 18th draws near, we would do well not to rush past it. Let us receive the ashes. Let us ponder the Last Things. Let us allow eternity to cast its searching and saving light upon our present lives.For it is only in remembering that we shall die that we truly learn how to live. Only in facing judgment that we begin, at last, to desire 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

When an exorcist meets with a person allegedly possessed by a demon, one of the first questions the priest must ascertain is how the demon gained access to the 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

Hardwired in the soul of a man is to fight and serve. It's by divine design. --- 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 mistake of the modern world to imagine that Christians best serve society by becoming bland and tame, like toothless lions. Our Lord did not tell His followers, “be like everyone else” but salt and light. He wanted them to change the world around them.Salt, after all, does not exist for its own sake. It preserves, sharpens, and reveals flavor. A society may have abundance, efficiency, and cleverness, and yet still taste oddly thin. When Christians live their Catholic faith honestly – praying when prayer is unfashionable, forgiving when resentment would be easier, welcoming life where it is inconvenient – they restore depth to the human experience. They remind the world that truth is not invented, that goodness is not a private hobby, and that love is more than sentiment. Remove the salt, and decay is not dramatic at first; it is simply inevitable.Light works differently. It does not argue with the darkness; it exposes it by being present. A single lamp does not abolish the night, but it makes orientation possible. In the same way, Catholics who live their faith publicly through works of mercy, fidelity in marriage, care for the poor, reverence for the weak,do not claim moral superiority. They simply make visible a way of living that assumes God is real and that human beings are made for more than comfort or consumption.The great contribution, then, is not power or prestige, but witness. The Christian adds to society a stubborn hope that refuses to believe evil is final, a patience grounded in eternity, and a joy that does not depend on circumstances behaving themselves. Such people are often inconvenient. Salt stings in open wounds; light reveals what some would rather keep hidden. Yet without them, society may grow cleverer and louder, but not wiser.When Catholics live as salt and light, they do not escape the world. They help save it from spoiling, and from forgetting what it is for. Remember, dear parishioner, you are called to be lions. --- 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 martyrs teach us a very valuable lesson. --- 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 humility of Mary sends vitriolic shivers down the spines of demons. --- 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 likes to mock Christians as silly for constantly calling upon God. It's a curious paradox at the heart of the Christian life which makes the believer appear faintly ridiculous to the sensible world: he dares to admit that he cannot heal himself. He stakes everything on Another, and does so with a cheerfulness that looks like folly. Yet it is precisely here that his courage is born. For when a man stops pretending he is whole and instead places his brokenness gladly in the hands of Christ, he discovers that reliance is not the enemy of boldness but its source. The one who knows he is being healed is freed from the exhausting labor of self-salvation, and may therefore stand upright, unashamed, and oddly fearless. --- 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 the scene upon that Galilean hillside, dear reader. There ascends a Man—not with tablets of stone borne heavily in His hands, as once did Moses upon Sinai amid thunder and smoke—but with words that burn more fiercely than any fire, words destined to be written not upon rock but upon the living tablets of human hearts.In the old story, Moses climbed the mountain alone, veiled in cloud and terror, to receive the Law that would set a people apart. The Ten Words thundered forth, carving boundaries around conduct, marking what was holy from what was profane. They were good, those commandments; they were the very breath of God restraining the chaos of fallen man. Yet they stood external, like a fence around a garden we could not enter without stumbling.Now behold a greater ascent. Jesus of Nazareth goes up into the mountain, and the crowds follow, not in fear, but drawn by a strange authority that mingles majesty with meekness. He sits (as teachers do), yet speaks as One who needs no intermediary. Where Moses mediated between God and man, this Man is the mediation. Where Moses brought down stone inscribed by the finger of God, this Man brings down Himself – the living Word, the very finger of God made flesh.He does not abolish the ancient Law; no, He fulfills it to its utmost depth. “You have heard that it was said... but I say to you.” With each repetition, the old commandment is not merely repeated but plunged into the hidden springs of the soul. Murder becomes anger unchecked; adultery becomes lust entertained; oaths become the simple honesty of “yes” and “no.” The Law, once a boundary line drawn upon the ground, is now revealed as a mountain peak we are called to scale but this, it's not by our own strength, but by the power of the One who has already reached the summit and beckons us upward.And yet, who among us can hear these words without a secret shrinking? The Beatitudes pronounce blessing upon poverty of spirit, upon mourning, upon meekness; these qualities we possess only in fragments, if at all. The command to love enemies, to turn the other cheek, to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect strikes like a sledgehammer upon our self-sufficiency. We are not flattered; we are exposed. The mountain does not flatter the climber; it humbles him.So let no one suppose the Sermon on the Mount is a counsel of despair. It is, rather, the map of joy. It is the narrow path that leads to life. In Christ, the old commandments find their fulfillment, and the new commandment of love becomes not a burden but a liberation. Ascend, then, with Him; listen to His voice upon the mountain; and find that the Lawgiver has become the Law fulfilled, the Teacher the Truth incarnate, the Moses greater than Moses, leading 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