Fr. Brian Soliven Sermons

We can’t ignore the proclamation of Jesus in today’s Gospel passage – "the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” It reverberates with mighty significance. It calls us to awaken from our slumber, as though with the trumpet of an archangel, urging us to lift our eyes from the mundane of the world and behold the extraordinary.

When Christ first uttered these words, He spoke to the hopes of a people longing for more (have you noticed, by the way, the human heart always wants more and yet nothing in the world can satisfy that hunger?). The Lord’s words are a call to embrace not a realm of terrestrial grandeur, nor a kingdom of swords and spears, but one of spirit and truth. It was an invitation for all to enter into a new covenant, where God Himself would dwell among men in the flesh, making His abode in the hearts of those He loves.

The historical biblical meaning of this proclamation lies not in geopolitical liberation, but in the liberation of souls. The Jews of Jesus’ time anticipated the Messiah as a political liberator; yet, in His divine paradox, Christ offered them freedom of a higher order – deliverance from sin and death, the true tyrants of humanity. The kingdom of heaven is an already-but-not-yet consummation of the divine promise—a present reality through the Church, Christ's mystical Body, and a future hope to be fulfilled in its fullness at the end of the world..

Moreover, it is a call to recognize our true inheritance as sons and daughters of the Most High. In this divine family, we find not just a distant God, but a Father who desires our conversion and holiness. We are made co-heirs with Christ, inheritors of eternal life and divine grace. It is a truth both humbling and exhilarating, that we, frail creatures of earth, are invited to partake in the divine nature, to be transformed from dust to something more beautiful and everlasting.

In this vein, we must ask ourselves: are we living as children of this kingdom? Are we bearers of the light, spreading the joy and truth of this proclamation to a world in dire need of hope? Let us then examine our own lives and strive to reflect the glory and justice of our heavenly inheritance. Each of us is called to be a sign of this kingdom made manifest, to live as though the very gates of heaven might swing open at any moment. And so, as we ponder this great mystery, allow the words of our Savior to challenge us: “Is your life aligned with this ultimate reality, the kingdom He declared?” 

It's not by accident the most important words ever uttered by Jesus, "This is my body" is also the slogan of the pro-abortion side. It's a diabolical mockery of the Creator of life. 

** Correction: The only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence was Charles Carroll, not John Carroll. Although there are cousins from the same prominent Catholic family in Maryland **

In the earliest chapters of human history, when humanity first awakened to the vast chasm that sin had torn between itself and God, the Almighty—rich in wisdom and mercy—established a system of sacrifice. To modern sensibilities, such practices may seem foreign, even unsettling. Yet these sacrifices were never barbaric rituals devoid of meaning. They were sacred signs, visible declarations of an invisible reality: sin creates a debt, and reconciliation demands atonement.

The Israelites, chosen to bear divine truth in a world shrouded in darkness, obeyed this command with reverence. Each unblemished lamb placed upon the altar, each offering consumed by sacred fire, testified to the weight of sin and the desperate human need to be restored to God. The Temple sacrifices were not empty motions; they were solemn reminders that sin costs something and that holiness requires blood.

And yet, this system was never meant to stand forever. No ritual, no matter how meticulously observed, could cleanse the human heart. These sacrifices were shadows, holy signposts pointing forward to a far greater reality, a redemptive plan set in motion “before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4). As Scripture declares, “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Hebrews 10:4). The altar prepared the way, but it could not complete the work.

Then, in the fullness of time, the answer arrived.

Jesus Christ entered the story, not as another offering, but as the offering. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). In Him, the fragmented symbols of ancient worship are gathered and fulfilled. God Himself stepped into the brokenness of human existence. The eternal Word became flesh and dwelt among us, fully divine and fully human. On the cross, Christ carried the crushing weight of our guilt, spanning the infinite gulf that sin had carved between heaven and earth.

The sacrifices of old were provisional, divine lessons training the hearts of God’s people to recognize the magnitude of what was to come. In Jesus, sacrifice reaches its perfection. He is both High Priest and spotless Victim, offering Himself freely, not as a cold transaction, but as an act of unfathomable love. With His final breath, the Temple system met its completion, and the Savior’s cry echoed through eternity: “It is finished” (John 19:30).

Now, standing in the light of this finished work, we are confronted with a question that cannot be ignored. Do we grasp the depth of Christ’s sacrifice? Have we allowed His love to transform us? Scripture calls us not merely to admire the cross, but to respond to it – offering our own lives as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God (Romans 12:1).

In the Lamb of God, redemption is complete. 

At the Jordan River, something quietly thunderous occurs. The Son of God steps down from the glorious Heavens into the murky water not to be made clean, but to make the waters themselves a divine proclamation. He reveals the secret, robbed from humanity since the drama of the Book of Genesis, when the Serpent tricked our first parents to eat of the Forbidden Fruit. It is tempting to think of baptism merely as an elaborate cultural ritual, or even as an excuse to throw another party. No, it is so much more majestic than that. Baptism is the unveiling.

Here stands Jesus, shoulder to shoulder with sinners, though He has no sin of His own to confess. In this act alone we learn something decisive about who He is. God does not reveal Himself here as a distant examiner of humanity, but as One who enters the queue, who wades into our muddied rivers and calls them holy by His presence. When the heavens open and the Father’s voice declares delight in the Son, it is not a private compliment whispered for Jesus’ ears alone. It is a public declaration of identity.

“This is my beloved Son.” Before a sermon is preached, before a miracle is worked, before a cross is raised, the Son is named and loved. The order matters. Jesus does not earn the Father’s pleasure; He receives it. And here is the astonishing turn of the Christian story: what is revealed in Him is not meant to stop with Him.

For if Christ steps into the waters on our behalf, then we step out of them in His. Baptism, ours and His alike, is not chiefly about our decision for God, but God’s declaration over us. In Christ, we are drawn into that same pronouncement of love. We do not become sons and daughters by striving, but by being joined to the Son.

Thus the Jordan becomes a mirror. When we look upon Jesus baptized, we glimpse our own true identity—often obscured by fear, failure, or frantic self-invention. Beneath all these lies a deeper truth spoken from heaven itself: you are beloved. And once a man or woman truly hears that, the whole of life, like the river itself, begins to flow in a new direction.

Keep searching for God, never stop. Never cease. True happiness awaits those who endure. 

Every human heart carries a hunger that no success, pleasure, or good work can ever fully satisfy. We chase after many things, hoping they will quiet that ache, yet they leave us restless still. This hunger is not a flaw in us; it is a clue placed there by God Himself. And when we come to Jesus Christ, we discover that He is not merely one answer among many, but the Answer our hearts have been seeking all along. 

The Word becoming flesh is a direct response to the shame endured by our first parents in Genesis 3:10. 

Christmas has a peculiar way of catching us off guard. Even those who approach it with little religious intention often find themselves unexpectedly moved. There are the lights, of course, small defiances of darkness that seem to insist, stubbornly, on hope. There is the scent of evergreen, trees that refuse to play along with winter’s story of decay. Our tables groan under the weight of food, and for a brief moment, in houses that are otherwise quite ordinary, we dine like kings in castles we only half-believe in. We laugh, we sing, and sometimes, rather inconveniently, we cry. For Christmas has the habit of stirring not only joy, but memory and memory is often tinged with loss.

This curious emotional upheaval is not accidental. Christmas reminds us that we are creatures made for relationship, and therefore made for love. We may grumble about the season’s commercialism, and not without reason. The tiresome pressure to find the “perfect gift” can make the whole affair feel suffocating. Yet even this complaint gives the game away. It reveals that we know, deep down, that shiny objects are poor substitutes for the thing we actually want. We sense that we are meant for something larger than consumption. We are not merely shoppers passing time in a well-lit store; we are beings made for communion.

And this, I think, explains why Christmas persists in haunting us. If God is indeed our Maker, then it follows that He understands our design better than we do. We are not mass-produced articles stamped out by chance, but carefully imagined persons. Long before we learned our own names, we were known. Long before we could reach for love, we were made for it.

One sees this truth most clearly, I suspect, at the end of life rather than at the height of it. When all the usual distractions are stripped away, the illusions lose their shine. No one, standing at death’s door, laments the possessions left unpurchased or the luxuries never acquired. Such things suddenly reveal themselves as what they always were—props, not pillars. What remains is love: the people we have given ourselves to, the people we have failed, and the question of whether we have ever truly responded to the Love that stands behind them all.

Here, then, is where Christianity makes its most audacious claim. It does not say merely that love matters, but that Love itself has entered the story. The Word by whom all things were made does not remain at a safe and reverent distance. He becomes a child. The Author steps onto the stage, not as a commanding hero, but as a helpless infant. The Light enters the darkness so quietly that it can be ignored and yet so decisively, that it cannot be extinguished.

This is why Christmas continues to unsettle us. It suggests that the longing we feel, the ache that no gift can quite satisfy, is not a mistake. It is a signpost. The Word became flesh and lived among us, and in doing so, He dignified our hunger for love by answering it—not with an argument, but with Himself.

Christmas has a peculiar way of catching us off guard. Even those who approach it with little religious intention often find themselves unexpectedly moved. There are the lights, of course, small defiances of darkness that seem to insist, stubbornly, on hope. There is the scent of evergreen, trees that refuse to play along with winter’s story of decay. Our tables groan under the weight of food, and for a brief moment, in houses that are otherwise quite ordinary, we dine like kings in castles we only half-believe in. We laugh, we sing, and sometimes, rather inconveniently, we cry. For Christmas has the habit of stirring not only joy, but memory and memory is often tinged with loss.

This curious emotional upheaval is not accidental. Christmas reminds us that we are creatures made for relationship, and therefore made for love. We may grumble about the season’s commercialism, and not without reason. The tiresome pressure to find the “perfect gift” can make the whole affair feel suffocating. Yet even this complaint gives the game away. It reveals that we know, deep down, that shiny objects are poor substitutes for the thing we actually want. We sense that we are meant for something larger than consumption. We are not merely shoppers passing time in a well-lit store; we are beings made for communion.

And this, I think, explains why Christmas persists in haunting us. If God is indeed our Maker, then it follows that He understands our design better than we do. We are not mass-produced articles stamped out by chance, but carefully imagined persons. Long before we learned our own names, we were known. Long before we could reach for love, we were made for it.

One sees this truth most clearly, I suspect, at the end of life rather than at the height of it. When all the usual distractions are stripped away, the illusions lose their shine. No one, standing at death’s door, laments the possessions left unpurchased or the luxuries never acquired. Such things suddenly reveal themselves as what they always were—props, not pillars. What remains is love: the people we have given ourselves to, the people we have failed, and the question of whether we have ever truly responded to the Love that stands behind them all.

Here, then, is where Christianity makes its most audacious claim. It does not say merely that love matters, but that Love itself has entered the story. The Word by whom all things were made does not remain at a safe and reverent distance. He becomes a child. The Author steps onto the stage, not as a commanding hero, but as a helpless infant. The Light enters the darkness so quietly that it can be ignored and yet so decisively, that it cannot be extinguished.

This is why Christmas continues to unsettle us. It suggests that the longing we feel, the ache that no gift can quite satisfy, is not a mistake. It is a signpost. The Word became flesh and lived among us, and in doing so, He dignified our hunger for love by answering it—not with an argument, but with Himself.

God became poor so that we might become rich.