Fr. Brian Soliven Sermons

 The fulfillment of prophecy is not merely a proof offered to reason, but an invitation to faith—calling the human heart to recognize that God truly enters history and walks with his people. --- 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 help...

Today, the words of our Lord confront and unsettle us. He declares that “tax collectors and prostitutes” go before us. Why is this so? Because they possess a quality that every saint instinctively understands. --- 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. E...

When John the Baptist sends his disciples to Jesus with that piercing question, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?” , we must not too quickly suppose that John had lost his faith. Far more often, doubt is not the absence of belief but the collision of belief with unexpected reality. Even the greatest saints may stand bewildered before the mystery of God’s methods. Here...

My friends, if only we could grasp this staggering truth: God does not love you as one among many, but as though you were the only soul He ever fashioned. His gaze is not a broad beam cast over humanity; it is a narrow and radiant shaft aimed straight at your heart. The One who carved the stars has considered every sorrow you carry and every hope you scarcely dare to utter, and He loves you not in...

We are far more valuable than we imagine ourselves to be; we are sons and daughters of the very Father whom Christ called His own. If we could see ourselves as Heaven sees us, we would walk with a courage that would unsettle every shadow in the world. And perhaps that is why the devil strains so fiercely to cloud our identity. For if he can lure us into forgetting whose children we are, he need no...

Sooner or later every one of us reaches a moment when we realize we are lost. Perhaps someone here today feels that very thing – an inner drifting, a sense that spiritually or morally we’ve wandered from the path. Life hasn’t unfolded the way we expected. The days begin to blur into one another, wake up, eat, work, sleep, repeat. Somewhere in that routine we ask, Where is my life going? Dante, the...

There was something wonderfully disarming about the way the sick came to Jesus -- no pretense, no polished virtue, only the quiet confession of need. And in that humble approach, His healing power shone brightest. For Christ never treated brokenness as a barrier but as a doorway through which His mercy might enter. He met trembling hands with compassion, fearful hearts with courage, and wounded li...

The following homily was delivered at a recent community wedding in which five couples, originally civilly married, had their marriages convalidated in the Catholic Church. --- 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...

In the spirit of George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation, giving thanks to God reminds us that gratitude is not only a personal virtue but a foundation for national character. Washington recognized that the blessings of peace, liberty, and opportunity were not earned by human effort alone, but were gifts worthy of humble acknowledgment. Following his example, we pause to express our thanks t...

Gratitude is the posture that opens the Christian heart to God’s grace. When we choose to be thankful, especially in ordinary moments or difficult seasons, we acknowledge that every good thing in our lives is a gift from the Father’s hand. Thanksgiving reorients our vision: instead of dwelling on what we lack, we remember the One who provides, sustains, and loves us without measure. A thankful hea...

It is 1927, and life in Mexico is changing with alarming speed. A nation that once found its strength and identity in faith is now facing a wave of hostility. The government has adopted a harsh, openly anti-Catholic stance, determined to uproot the very beliefs that shaped the hearts of the people. At that time, more than 90% of Mexicans saw the Catholic faith as the center of their lives. It was...

In the Book of Maccabees, the mother who watched her seven sons die rather than betray their faith stands as one of Scripture’s most radiant examples of courage. In the face of unimaginable loss, she refused to surrender to fear or despair. Her strength did not come from the hope of earthly rescue, but from her unwavering trust that God would honor their sacrifice with eternal life. She spoke not...

There comes a moment in every believer’s life when inherited faith will no longer suffice. The gentle warmth of family tradition, the comfort of familiar hymns, the rhythm of ritual—all these are good and precious things. Yet when the cold wind of opposition blows, when faith is mocked or maligned, or when sorrow cuts deep into the soul, such belief will crumble like a house built on sand. It is n...

Every baptized Christian, however small or obscure, bears a dignity that no earthly monument can rival. The Dedication of the Basilica of St. John Lateran that we celebrate today reminds us that the Church is not first of marble or of gold, but of souls. The colossal statues of the twelve apostles that line its nave are not merely ornaments of stone, but symbols of the living reality upon which Ch...

They came to Him because, at last, they had found someone who saw them as more than the sum of their failures. The world had written its verdict on their lives— unclean, unworthy, beyond redemption —but Jesus looked past the grime and saw the image of God still glimmering beneath. His holiness did not repel them, as cold virtue might; it drew them, as fire draws the freezing. In His presence, they...

This Advent, we are presented with a most extraordinary grace. Our own parish will host a first-class relic — that is, an actual fragment of the body — of the Church’s newest saint,  Carlo Acutis , this coming Saturday, November 22nd, from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. Only weeks ago, in the grandeur of St. Peter’s Basilica, before tens of thousands gathered in solemn joy, Pope Leo XIV declared this youn...

Imagine all the saints and angels stand about us as a great cloud of witnesses, not as distant spectators, but as dear friends leaning over the railings of Heaven, their faces alight with joy. They cheer us on. Every step we take toward the light sends ripples of gladness through that radiant company. To them, our smallest victories over despair and sin are no trifles; they are echoes of the same...

Faith, like the body, is strengthened by strain. Ease has never made a saint, nor comfort a conqueror. When St. Paul pressed on through shipwreck, hunger, and chains, he was not merely enduring hardship, he was training his soul to trust a strength not his own. There is something deeply spiritual in doing what is physically hard: each drop of sweat whispers that the flesh is weak, and yet the spir...

Last Saturday, our parish retreat was an astounding success! It was a day that will long be remembered, not merely for the crowd it drew, but for the spirit that filled the air. Nearly two hundred and fifty souls came together, united by joy and fellowship, as we launched our new parish Mission Statement:  “To be faithful like Mary.” It was not an ordinary hunger that stirred among us. It was...

The teachings of Jesus, though rooted in love and truth, can sometimes divide families because they call each person to choose between the comfort of the familiar and the courage of faith. When one member decides to follow Christ wholeheartedly, it can challenge the values, traditions, or beliefs of others, creating tension where harmony once seemed certain. Yet even in this division, there is pur...

It is a strange and splendid truth that the mightiest men are those who kneel most often. Pope John Paul II, like a knight of old, stood firm in the arena of a crumbling world not by the strength of sword or scepter, but by the silent, ceaseless watch of prayer. In an age addicted to speed and spectacle, he dared to believe that stillness before God was a greater act than any speech before men. Hi...

Our Lord bids us to be vigilant, not out of fear, but because the world is not our true home. To ‘gird your loins’ is no idle metaphor; it is the act of a soldier who knows the battle is real though unseen, the traveller who knows the road is long but worth every step. Christ does not ask us to be anxious, but awake. The drowsiness of comfort, the slow poison of distraction these are the true dang...

When our Lord posed the haunting question,  “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” , He did not pose it as a riddle, nor merely as prophecy, but as a mirror held before our hearts. It is not faith in the abstract He seeks, as if counting theological knowledge  or measuring church attendance, but the kind of faith that breathes, wrestles, and walks with God when the...

St. Ignatius of Antioch, facing martyrdom with unwavering courage, expressed a profound desire to be "ground by the teeth of wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ." In this powerful image, he saw suffering not as defeat, but as a sacred offering—his very life becoming a Eucharistic sacrifice. For Ignatius, to die for Christ was not tragedy, but triumph. It was a way to be fully...

There is a scene in the Gospel according to Saint Luke, brief in its telling but vast in its implication, that speaks volumes about the human heart. Ten lepers cry out to Christ from a distance, exiled by their affliction, their humanity diminished in the eyes of the world. With a word, He sends them to the priests. As they go, they are healed. But only one returns! One out of ten. And even more s...