Fr. Brian Soliven Sermons

Beneath Rome lies a city most visitors never see. Hundreds of miles of galleries wind through soft volcanic rock, and scholars commonly estimate that some 750,000 people were buried there between the second and fifth centuries. Most were ordinary believers: laborers, slaves, mothers, children. This was not a handful of secret burials but a whole people, generation after generation, laying their dead in the same way.Roman culture saw death as a grim ending, and cremation was common. The Christians buried their dead, as Christ was buried, and called the place a koimeterion, a sleeping-place. Those in the niches were waiting for the resurrection. The walls bear the same hope: the Good Shepherd, the anchor, the praying figure, and epitaphs like "Live in God" and "In peace." For a community that knew persecution firsthand, there is remarkably little despair.Christians gathered at the tombs of martyrs on the anniversary of their deaths, which they called their birthdays, the day they were born into heaven. There they celebrated the Eucharist, often with the altar set directly over the burial place. The Catacomb of Callixtus preserves the crypt of several third-century popes, and nearby lies Saint Cecilia, one of Rome's most beloved martyrs.The logic flowed from the heart of the faith. If Christ had conquered death, those who died in him were more alive, not less. The Church on earth and the saints in heaven were one body, and the Mass, where heaven and earth meet, was the natural place to feel that unity. Revelation pictures the martyrs beneath the altar in heaven, and the early Christians set their altars above them on earth.Our age tends to hide death or soften it with euphemism. The early Christians went down into the dark, sang at the graves, and shared the Body and Blood of Christ over the bones of the faithful departed. They believed death is not the end, that the dead in Christ remain part of the family, and that worship unites the living and the saints. Seventeen centuries later, the catacombs still say the same thing: those who die in Christ are not lost. They are near.  --- 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 the mountains of Umbria, a region in southern Italy, there is a small town called Norcia where the famous Saint Benedict was born in the year 480. A Benedictine monastery (a religious order that he founded which bears his name) sits high on a mountain overlooking the town. The first hour of prayer begins at 2:15AM in the morning. The valley is dark and the stone is cold. Somewhere in a quiet corridor, a man in a black habit puts his feet on the floor and rises to pray.Most of us have never chosen an hour like that. We reach for our phones and negotiate with the alarm. Yet in the monastery, men who have given up careers, families, and the freedom to order their own days get up in the dark, and they do it by choice. Rising is the first thing they offer each day. Before they have achieved anything or spoken to anyone, before they have been useful to the world, they stand and sing to God as the rest of sleep.The reason goes back to the command Christ called the greatest: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. Most of us hear those words and agree with them in the abstract. The monks have tried to build a life that takes the words literally. If you are to love God with all your heart, then no part of the day can be held back from him, not the best hours, not the first hours, not even the hours when sleep is sweetest. Saint Benedict wrote in his Rule that nothing should be put before the Work of God, and he meant the chanted prayer of the Church, the Divine Office, offered again and again through the day.There is something unspeakably tender in this. A man does not rise at four to prove his toughness. He rises because love keeps its own hours. Think of a mother awake with a sick child or a lover watching at a window. Love does not ask when it is convenient. The monks have simply turned that old human truth toward heaven and decided that God deserves the watch.And the early hour is not only a sacrifice. It is also a gift. In the dark, before the world fills with noise, the soul is quiet enough to hear. The psalms rise and fall in the candlelit choir, and the Latin settles into the stone. There is a kind of freedom in having nothing to prove at that hour. No one is watching, and no one will be impressed. The only audience is the One who is always awake. Whatever is sung in that darkness is sung for love alone.Then the light comes.They pray, they work, and they return again to prayer. They have spent the whole day, hour by hour, saying one word in a hundred ways: yes.I think this is what moves us about the monks of Norcia, even if we will never wear the habit. They remind us that a human life can be organized around something greater than ourselves. They keep alive the astonishing claim that God is real enough to wake up for, that love is worth the cost of a hard morning, and that all of it is for him.Somewhere tonight a bell will ring in the dark, and men will rise. They are not at the edge of the world, as it might seem. They are at the center of it, doing what we were all made to do: loving God with everything they have, beginning before the dawn.  --- Help Spread the Good News --- Father Brian’s homilies are shared freely thanks to generous listeners like you. If his words have blessed you, consider supporting this volunteer effort. Every gift helps us continue recording and sharing the hope of Jesus—one homily at a time. Give Here: https://frbriansoliven.org/give

From Pope John Paul II first homily as he begins his pontificate in 1978: "Do not be afraid. Open, I say open wide the doors for Christ.... Christ knows “that which is in man”. He alone knows it. So often today, man does not know that which is in him, in the depths of his mind and heart. So often he is uncertain about the meaning of his life on this earth. He is assailed by doubt, a doubt which turns into despair. We ask you, therefore, we beg you with humility and with trust, let Christ speak to man. He alone has words of life, yes, of life eternal."  --- 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 the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus in this Sundays Gospel passage, He answered with words that reach into the very heart of our lives: “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”The coin bore Caesar’s image, and so it belonged to Caesar. But you and I bear another image. Scripture tells us that we are created in the image and likeness of God. And what bears God’s image belongs to God.We owe Caesar our taxes, our lawful obedience, and our duties as citizens. But we owe God something far greater. We owe Him our hearts.And yet, how often do we give the world our time, our energy, and our attention, leaving God whatever remains? We fill our days with work, worries, and distractions, then wonder why our souls feel empty. We give Caesar our coins, but do we give God our hearts?My brothers and sisters, God does not want to be merely one part of our lives. He wants to be the center of our lives. He wants to enter our decisions, our relationships, our struggles, and even our hidden thoughts. He wants us to belong to Him completely.This is the invitation of Catholic spirituality: not to escape the world, but to live in the world with our hearts fixed on heaven. We fulfill our daily duties, but we never forget whom we ultimately serve. No earthly power, no worldly ambition, and no passing pleasure can take the place of God.So today, let us ask ourselves: What have I been withholding from the Lord? My time? My forgiveness? My trust? My willingness to follow His will?The coin may belong to Caesar, but you belong to God. You were created in His image, redeemed by His Son, and called to eternal life with Him.Do not give God merely what is left over. Give Him your first love, your deepest trust, and your whole heart.For in the end, the greatest question will not be what we have given to Caesar, but whether we have given ourselves to 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

From a letter written by the French nun St. Margaret Mary: This divine heart (Sacred Heart of Jesus) is an abyss of all blessings, and into it the poor should submerge all their needs. It is an abyss of joy in which all of us can immerse our sorrows. It is an abyss of lowliness to counteract our foolishness, an abyss of mercy for the wretched, an abyss of love to meet our every need. --- 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