Fr. Brian Soliven Sermons

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