Fr. Brian Soliven Sermons

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 triumph that shook the world when Christ rose from the tomb. And so they beckon us onward, ever upward, until faith becomes sight and we, too, join the chorus of eternal praise.

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 spirit may still triumph.

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 a deeper kind; it was the hunger of hearts longing to know the truth that nourishes the soul. We desired to understand why the Blessed Virgin, whose name adorns our parish walls and whose fiat still echoes through the centuries, holds such a luminous place in the life of the Church.

Together we journeyed back into the early dawn of Christianity, walking beside the voices of our ancestors in the faith, the saints and scholars who bore the torch of truth when the world was just starting to hear the Good News of the Gospel. We listened to St. Ignatius of Antioch, who once knew St. Peter himself—a single heartbeat away from the words of Christ. And in that closeness, that living chain of witness, we discovered what the earliest Christians knew beyond doubt: that the Church was, from the very beginning, deeply and thoroughly Catholic.

During the time of questions, one of our newest parishioners, a convert from Protestantism, raised a tender yet courageous question. “Why,” she asked, “do so many non-Catholic Christians accuse us of worshiping Mary? When we pray the rosary or sing to her, they say we take away from Jesus.”

Our speaker, Joshua Charles, himself a convert and a man whose intellect burns with zeal for truth, answered with great clarity. He explained that since the 16th century, much of Protestantism has turned away from the Holy Mass as a true sacrifice. To them, it became a mere symbol, a sacred reenactment but not the very reality of Calvary made present again.

Here lies the key to so much misunderstanding. For Catholics, the highest form of worship is sacrifice—the self-offering of Jesus Christ to the Father upon the altar. It is in this divine act that all our praises, prayers, and devotions find their meaning and their end. But if one no longer sees worship as sacrifice, then song and prayer become the summit. Anything else, like love for Mary, can seem a rival to Christ rather than a reflection of Him.

Yet Mary’s glory is no rival to His. She magnifies the Lord. Her faithfulness is the clear mirror that catches the sunlight of her Son. To be faithful like Mary is to let that same light pass through us, so that others, too, might see Christ shining more clearly in the world.

And so, our retreat was more than an event; it was a quiet awakening—a rediscovery of what it means to be Catholic, to be faithful, to be, like Mary, utterly surrendered to the will of God.

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 purpose; Jesus reminds us that true peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of conviction. Through faithfulness to His word, hearts can be transformed, and what begins in division can ultimately lead to a deeper, eternal unity grounded in truth and grace.

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. His vigilance was not the fretful anxiety of the world, but the blazing calm of one who knew that the universe turns upon the hinge of a whisper to heaven. To pray without ceasing is to love without limit—and in this, the holy Pope taught us the true posture of revolution.

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 dangers. We are called to live with lamps lit and hearts ready, not because the night is long, but because the dawn is certain.

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 world goes dim.

It is easy enough, is it not, to believe in the light when all is bright? A child believes the sun will rise, not because he’s studied astronomy, but because it always has. But the Christian faith is tested not by the sunrise but by the silence of midnight. Will we still believe when the world mocks, when prayers go unanswered, when suffering strikes without explanation?

Faith is not merely assent to a creed. Fallen angels do that, and tremble. No, the faith Christ longs to find is that defiant trust—a love-soaked loyalty—that looks full in the face of suffering and still whispers, “Jesus, I trust in you.” It is the faith of Abraham climbing Mount Moriah, of Daniel kneeling before open windows, of the Virgin Mary keeping all these things in her heart.

We must not mistake familiarity for faith. There are many who have grown up going to Mass each Sunday whose hearts remain untouched by the burning presence of God.

So, the question returns, echoing across centuries: Will He find faith?

Let us not imagine that He is asking whether we have tidy answers or triumphant ministries. He is asking whether He will find hearts—wounded perhaps, weary certainly—but still turned toward Him. Will He find men and women who have not bowed to the golden idols of ease and spectacle, who have not traded the scandal of the cross for the applause of the world?

If He finds even a mustard seed of such faith, it will be enough. For faith, in the end, is not the achievement of the strong but the desperate clinging of the weak to the One who is strong. And perhaps it is precisely in our clinging, trembling and uncertain though it may be, that Christ sees the echo of His own steadfastness in the Garden of Gethsemane. Yes, He asked the question. But it is we who must answer it with our lives. And when He comes, oh glorious terror, oh splendid hope, may He find us not with explanations, but with open hands, lifted eyes, and hearts still burning.

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 united with the One he loved. His words inspire us to embrace our own trials with faith, knowing that even in pain, we can be transformed into something holy, something that nourishes others with love and purpose.

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 shocking, it's a Samaritan no less who falls at His feet in thanksgiving. And Jesus asks, with divine ache: "Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine?" (Luke 17:17).

Ten were healed; one was grateful. This is no small parable in passing. It is a mirror. We are all, in some manner, lepers—ailing in soul or circumstance, calling out to God in the wilderness. And He, in mercy, hears us. He grants healing, restoration, daily bread, breath itself. But how often do we return to give thanks?

The modern soul, so puffed with knowledge, tends to treat blessings as entitlements. Health is expected until lost. Beauty, until faded. Time, until it is spent. We do not thank the sun for rising; we demand it. But the thankful man, the one like the Samaritan, sees all with fresh eyes. He understands that he is not owed the sunrise, nor the healing, nor the gift of grace itself. All is gift. All is mercy.

The ungrateful man lives in illusion, thinking himself self-made, imagining a world where God is irrelevant. But the grateful man sees clearly. He sees the Giver behind the gift.

In the end, gratitude is not for God’s benefit, as though He needed our thanks. It is for ours. The nine were healed in body, yes—but the one who returned was healed in soul. Christ says to him, “Your faith has saved you." The Greek word here—sozo—can mean saved, made whole. The returning leper received more than the others because he gave more: he gave thanks.

Let us then cultivate the holy habit of gratitude, not as a mere politeness but as worship. Let us rise each day and say, “Thank You,” for the breath in our lungs, the light in our eyes, the cross that bore our salvation. For in giving thanks, we do not flatter God; we draw near to Him. We remember who we are, and more importantly, whose we are.

And perhaps, in the end, gratitude is the seed of every other virtue. For the man who is truly thankful will not be proud, nor greedy, nor bitter. He will walk humbly, love deeply, and live wisely.May we be the one who returns. In fact, by coming to Sunday Mass today, you are returning back to the God who gives us everything. You are the Samaritan. That is why the “Eucharist”, the greatest gift of all because it is Jesus Christ himself, comes from the Greek word,  “thanksgiving”.  

Indeed, in the quiet home of Bethany, amidst the clatter of dishes and the urgency of preparation, Mary did something both simple and profound—she sat at the feet of Christ. While Martha busied herself with many good things, Mary chose the better thing, the one needful thing. It is a subtle yet eternal truth: the soul’s deepest nourishment is not found in the rush of service, but in the stillness of communion. To sit quietly and listen to the Word Himself is not idleness, but the highest act of love. In a world that applauds motion and noise, Mary reminds us that peace is found not in doing for Jesus, but in being with Him.