Fr. Brian Soliven Sermons

Built on a hill outside the ancient walls of imperial Rome, lies the headquarters of the Catholic Church known officially as Vatican City. Why is it built there and no where else? Why not Jerusalem? The answer is simple: St. Peter made the decision to turn around and walk back to Rome. Rather than flee the torture of his fellow Christians, who were being crucified, doused with oil a...

It's shocking to think how quickly Lent has arrived. This Wednesday, we'll hit the ground running with Ash Wednesday, as blessed ashes are placed on our heads as a sign of our inner repentance. I'd like to invite you to attend one of the three masses that day: HOLY FAMILY (Portola) 8:30am & 6pm; HOLY ROSARY MISSION (Loyalton) 12:10pm.  Before we can even understand the sign...

"The Kingdom of God is at hand," Jesus proclaims in today's Gospel. "The time of fulfillment has arrived." For centuries, the Jewish people waited patiently for the long promised messiah who would establish a new, everlasting Kingdom. Unlike the tired kingdoms of men whose fading glimmer relied on wealth, palaces and strength, God himself now would be its architect, b...

It’s amazing how words can drastically alter your life. In this Sunday's gospel we hear St. John the Baptist proclaim, “ BEHOLD THE LAMB OF GOD .”(Cf. John 1:29) That mere phrase was enough for St. Andrew and St. Peter to leave all that they loved, their families, homes, everything they held dear and follow Jesus. Those simple arrangement of words -- would eventu...

Living in California, we know better than most, how devastating fire can be. It consumes everything it touches, annihilating, bulldozing, even transforming all in its path. John the Baptist will use this precise image of fire to describe the power of baptism that Jesus Christ will undergo in our Gospel this Sunday. Why? Like fire, our own baptism into Jesus Christ is...

Jesus is born. God dwells with us like never before. How can we approach life the same as if this world-shattering event did not even happen? Oh did it happen. The coming of God as a baby even changed how we tell time. For the moment he was born, we charted our calendar from his birth at year zero to now. It is the year 2021, two-thousand and twenty-one years since His birth. L...

There's no better way to begin 2021 then by reflecting on the beautiful Solemnity of Mary, The Mother of God. Each year, we as the Church begin with her. Why? How could we not? Jesus himself began his earthly existence with her. If we want to follow Christ, our master, we follow his lead. Mary, who held the baby Jesus in her arms and stared at the tiny little face when he laid in the manger. Thirt...

We're constantly sold the illusion that the accumulation of wealth--the bigger house, the latest iPhone, the bigger truck--will bring us happiness. Nonsense! Of course, there is nothing wrong with those things by themselves. However, when we pin our value on material stuff, then we're trapped in an endless rat race; it's never enough. This Christmas, we remember that lasting happiness and the...

Have you ever wondered what God's biggest problem is? You'd be surprised. God's biggest problem is the same as our biggest problem. It is the root of all our interpersonal conflicts, why our spouses irritate us, why our teenagers drive us up the wall, and even why entire nations go to war. Yet paradoxically, this problem allows the possibility of what makes life even worth living, namely...

If you were to ask the average person for the reasons why they are happy, they'd probably give you a list of the things they have: a house, a family, health, food on the table etc. All great things. Now imagine if all those things listed was suddenly gone. Would that person still be happy? Yet for St. Paul in the second reading at Mass, he commands Christians with the utmost urgency, "Rejoice...

The first of the four candle is lit in the wreath. Advent is now firmly upon us. The four Sundays leading up to Christmas is probably one of my favorite liturgical seasons in the Church. The tone of the readings intensifies with an ominous tinge of the end of the world. So often we get bogged down by life's daily drudgery that we neglect questions of true eternal life...

It's the year 303AD, emperor Diocletian sits on the throne of Rome when a brilliant idea enters his head. He decrees that “the sacred texts and holy testaments of the Lord and the divine Scriptures be found, so that they could be burnt; the Lord’s basilicas were to be pulled down; and the celebration of sacred rites and holy reunions of the Lord were to be prohibited” (Acts of the Martyr...

What makes for a good solider also makes for a good Christian. Discipline, obedience, selflessness are all qualities we hope to see in those who serve our nation. When these virtues go "above and beyond the call of duty" we bestow the rare Medal of Honor upon them. Out of the 40 million men and women who have served in the history of our military, fewer than 3600 have received such a recognization...

What is it about the human spirit that lauds the difficult? We celebrate our war heroes with medals, hoist trophies upon our champions, and marvel at earth's highest mountains as something to be climbed and conquered. Intuitively we sense that everything worth doing must be hard. So it is with love. Like the feats of heroes, champions, and death-defying climbers,...

As November begins, we turn our attention to our Heavenly home as we celebrate the Solemnity of All Saints. The saints have finished the race. They made it. From the very beginning of our Church, the early Christians venerated these holy brothers and sisters of ours as an example for us to follow, who still battle here on earth. From St. Paul, St. Benedict, St. Teresa of Avila, to the more contemp...

POP QUIZ! Name all Ten Commandments, in order. As you gather your thoughts, its key to remember how monumental these laws are to our Western Civilization. God famously gave them to Moses on Mt. Sinai as the foundational moral code for his new people. Through these laws, God wanted his followers to behave differently than everyone else. Fidelity to them would bring great blessing; fl...

The next time you pull money out of your wallet, read our famous national slogan: "In God We Trust." Have you ever wondered why we put this on our currency? The first time it appeared was in 1864, during the devastation of the Civil War-- the bloodiest war in our history. "In God We Trust" would later be decreed to put on our paper currency in 1956. At that time our nation again faced an existenti...

It's been a busy but beautiful few days here in the life of our parish. We just finished celebrating three memorable holy sacraments: first holy communion, first confession, and holy matrimony. Besides the grace of God that comes bursting through each of them, there's an external gesture that traditionally happens in all three. What do you think that may be? Listen and found out (well the tit...

A few days ago, God showed me an amazing gift -- a glimpse of Heaven. Surprisingly, there were no clouds, nor singing angels, or golden gates. Instead, I saw it in Sierra Valley. All worldly distractions faded away at that moment and the lofty words of St. Paul from the Second Reading at Mass came alive: "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorab...

Every Sacrament is a powerful gift of grace. Last Saturday was no different. I had the great honor of bestowing the Sacrament of Confirmation on twelve of our young people. Under normal circumstances the Bishop is the ordinary minister, but due to the diocesan wide COVID shutdown, he delegated this awesome honor to the local pastors. In this Sacrament the same Chrism oil used at their ba...

For the fire fighter, the soldier, the police officer, and the immigrant, love takes on a seemingly contradictory character. For the sake of their loved ones, they choose a path that forces them to depart from their loved ones for long periods of time, for the benefit of love. Pulled in two directions, they sacrifice the very nature of love itself, which seeks the closeness of the belove...

It's not a question of "if" but "when." When will I get into a conflict with someone? If you're alive and breathing, conflict is simply built into human interaction. There is no avoiding it. Which I why Peter's question to Jesus in this Sunday's Gospel reading is stunningly practical: "If my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive?"  (Matthew 18:21) It's not easy...

"Take up your cross," Jesus tells us in this Sunday's gospel reading from Matthew 16:21-27. The Twelve Disciples must have be horrified when they heard this command. In the first century, the cross meant something more sinister than the love and devotion it exudes today. For them, the cross was a brutal instrument of Roman torture, corruption, fear, and agony. The cross was spe...

The longest running institution in Western Civilization is the Catholic Church. 2,000 years and 266 popes later, the "rock" of St. Peter on which Jesus himself built his Church still stands. Is it because these men are extremely intelligent and holy? Some were. But that's not the reason why we've been able to outlast whole empires and nations over two millennia. If the Church depended up...

A wildfire rages right now just outside the little town that I serve. If the wind was blowing in a slightly different direction, it could have devastated our community. Natural disasters such as this always reminds us of just how fragile life truly is; it can change as swiftly as the breeze. Regardless of the hardships we face, the Cannaanite woman in the Gospel Reading today i...