Fr. Brian Soliven Sermons

Something truly amazing has been happening over the past two weeks. Even though I’ve been a priest for over ten years now, thanks be to God, I have never seen anything like it.  One after another, almost like a holy assembly line, people have been coming to confession after decades away from the Church. Son and daughters of God are coming to the stuffy, little, carpeted confessional that we have at St. Mary’s parish, after twenty, thirty, forty, and over sixty years of living in spiritual darkness. It’s the constant amount of people that are coming that is shocking. It’s as if they all got together one day and decided to come at the same time. If you’ve had to wait in the confession line recently for a long time, let me take this opportunity to apologize for any inconvenience. When these souls return to Christ, a priest is wise to take his time and gently listen as they pour out the deepest, most shameful secrets of their lives. 

Christianity is more than a collection of ancient dos and don'ts. Rather, at its core, Christianity is about a relationship with the Incarnate Word of God, Jesus Christ. St. Peter finally understands this in our Gospel reading today as we hear the famous conversation between himself and Our Lord, "Do you love me?" 

Jesus comes to unite us in the Truth. 

The mission of Jesus is simple -- unite the family of God back to the Trinity. He comes to restore the union we once had before the Fall of Adam and Eve. By his blood we are healed. 

When we pray from the depths of our inner most heart, a pure, distilled, sense of our soul arises. All pretenses are removed. The masks come off. There's no one to impress. Jesus in today's stunning gospel, is in that very place. A window into the mysterious, unfathomable, eternal core of the Most Holy Trinity is before us.    

The fifty days of Easter are now drawing to a close. We can soon officially stop saying “Happy Easter” to one another, our friends and our dear family. Now people will stop thinking Catholics are weird, or at least in regards to that salutation. The pope, the Blessed Mother, relics, purgatory and all our other seemingly bizarre practices and teachings may still keep us from winning a popularity contest. But that’s ok. We’re not Catholic because it’s easy. The famous 20th century English convert, G.K. Chesterton put it best when asked why he became Catholic. He simply said “Catholicism is true.” 

Our mission now as 21st century Catholics in California is the same mission that Jesus gave his first century disciples in Jerusalem: “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit…. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” (Cf. Matthew 28:19-20) These were the last words our Lord told us before ascending back into Heaven. Each Christian is now tasked with this “Great Commision” to spread the faith to all the corners of the Earth. 2,000 years later, the spread of the Church is nothing less than remarkable. Despite our human failings, the Church is present and alive on every continent and country. Of the 7.88 billion people alive today, one third of humanity professes to be Christians. One sixth of those, totalling nearly 1.36 billion (17.7%), are Catholics. Here in our own country, Catholicism is the largest Christian body with 61.9 million members. In the Golden State, 250 years after the first Spanish arrived on these shores establishing the California missions, giving us the names of our biggest cities like Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, and San Francisco, 30% are Catholics, numbering around 10 million souls. 

The “Great Commision” of Jesus Christ continues. As impressive as these numbers are, the throbbing heart of the Catholic Church is not simply racking up stats on a graph sheet. The mission of the Church is to “make disciples” of Jesus Christ, which will always be harder to accomplish.

Jesus makes a bold promise in today's reading from the Gospel: "Amen, Amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you." (Cf. John 16:23). Let's put it into practice! 

Jesus promised us in last Sunday's Gospel reading to never leave us orphans. At no time are we ever alone, especially in the midst of the storms of our lives. This Holy Spirit that was given to us at our baptism is the source of our Christian joy, no matter how relentless the winds and rain. 

In the first reading today, we find St. Paul in the city of Philippi, which will be the first church he establishes on the European continent. It's here where one of the most comedic events of Sacred Scripture takes place -- he's beaten with rods, thrown in prison, the earth quakes, and then something unexpected happens. 

“Good morning Father,” says a young man. “My name is *Michael*” (name changed for privacy). “Does St. Mary’s have a young adult group? I’ve been looking for a group of Catholic’s my age. Our culture has become more and more godless that I feel I need to surround myself with people who are like-minded. Sometimes it can be lonely…” That last sentence, “It can be lonely”, struck me in the heart. It reminded me of when I was a young college junior at UC Davis. I was starting to take my Catholic faith more seriously at this point in my life but I was having difficulty finding peers who wanted to love the Lord in the same way. Afterall, Davis, much like most college campuses, is notorious for being hostile to religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular. Christian beliefs are roundly mocked as intolerant and backwards, especially if you maintain traditional beliefs on the hot-button issues of our age, like abortion and human sexuality. Oftentimes you feel like a lone blade of green grass in the middle of dry desert dunes.