Fr. Brian Soliven Sermons

The world's greatest sporting event owes its beginnings, in part, to the vision of a devout Catholic. Jules Rimet believed that sport could reflect the dignity of the human person and unite peoples divided by language, culture, and even war. His dream became the FIFA World Cup—a celebration of nations gathered not for conquest, but for friendly competition.

There is something curious about the way people speak of God. We often imagine Him as distant, alone, or occupied with the endless business of running the universe. We picture a great King, but seldom a Father. Left to ourselves, we could never have guessed what God is like in His own life. We may have discovered that there is a Creator by looking at mountains, stars, or the order of the world, but we could never have discovered the secret of His heart.

That secret had to be revealed.

When Jesus came, He did not simply bring new commandments or wiser teachings. He came to introduce us to Someone. Again and again He spoke of "My Father." He lived in perfect love, perfect trust, and perfect obedience to the Father. Then He promised the Holy Spirit, the very bond of love between the Father and the Son, to dwell within His people. Suddenly the veil was pulled back. We discovered that God is not solitary. From all eternity, God is a communion of love: the Father giving Himself to the Son, the Son returning Himself completely to the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeding as the living gift of that eternal love.

This is not a puzzle for clever minds to solve. It is an invitation.

The astonishing thing is that Jesus did not reveal this mystery merely to satisfy our curiosity. He revealed it because He desires to draw us into it. He does not stand at a distance and say, "Look how wonderful My Father's house is." He opens the door and says, "Come in." Through Him we become children of the Father, not by nature, but by grace. We are welcomed into the very family life of God.

If this seems too wonderful to believe, that is because it is. No philosopher could have imagined it. No religion devised by man would dare to promise such a thing. We might have hoped for forgiveness. We might even have hoped for heaven. But who would have dared to hope that the eternal Son would make room for us in His own relationship with the Father?

Yet this is the Christian gospel. The life of God is not kept behind locked gates. In Christ, it is opened to all who will receive Him. The Father delights to call us His children, the Son calls us His brothers and sisters, and the Holy Spirit teaches our hearts to cry, "Abba, Father."

The end of the Christian life is not simply to become better people. It is to share, forever, in the endless exchange of love that has filled the Trinity from all eternity. That is the destiny Jesus came to reveal, and the gift He and only He, came to give.

It is a curious thing that we often expect God to perform His greatest wonders amid thunder and spectacle, while He prefers the quiet of a confessional. There, behind an ordinary screen or across a simple room, Christ performs miracles no less astonishing than opening blind eyes or raising the dead. He takes a soul bent beneath the weight of guilt and bids it stand upright again. He speaks through the frail voice of a priest, yet it is His own word that breaks the chains no human hand could loosen. The penitent enters carrying a burden invisible to the world and leaves with a heart made lighter than the morning. Such miracles seldom make the news because they occur where heaven most delights to work—in secret. Yet if we could see with God's eyes, we might discover that the greatest marvels on earth are not always the healing of the body, but the resurrection of a soul.

If we learn to see with spiritual eyes, we begin to recognize a battle unfolding all around us. It is not a conflict over land or power, but a struggle for something far more precious than either: you.

Let me ask you a question: What is the love of your life? It is not always an easy question to answer. We may think one thing occupies the throne of our hearts, only to discover that something else has quietly taken its place.

Perhaps a better question is this: Where do your time, energy, and attention most naturally flow? For what do you willingly sacrifice your comfort, your money, or your peace of mind? The answer to these questions often reveals what we truly love. 

For the truth is that the center of a person's life is rarely found in what he says is most important to him, but in what he consistently gives himself to. Our hours are like a compass; they point, often more honestly than our words, to the object of our deepest love. Fr. Joseph Whelan, a Jesuit priest from Maryland, once wrote what happens when we truly love something: “It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.”

May I suggest making God the love of our lives? Nothing is more practical than finding God. At first hearing, such a statement sounds rather strange. We are accustomed to thinking of practical things as those that concern money, schedules, careers, and the thousand little arrangements by which we order our days. Yet the old Jesuit priest was right when he wrote, “What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.”

This is because man is not merely a creature that thinks; he is a creature that loves. Wherever the heart has gone, the rest of the person will eventually follow.

Tell me what a man loves, and I can tell you something of the shape of his life. The object of his affection will determine what gets him out of bed in the morning, what occupies his thoughts in the quiet hours, what causes him grief, and what fills him with joy. The lover of wealth sees the world through the eyes of profit. The lover of honor is forever concerned with reputation. The lover of pleasure spends his days chasing delights that vanish almost as soon as they are grasped.

“Fall in love… stay in love, and it will decide everything.” There is a profound truth hidden in those simple words. We are always being decided by our loves. The only real question is whether we shall give our hearts to things that perish or to the One who does not.

For we become, in the end, what we worship. And the great mercy of God is that He does not ask first for our accomplishments or our talents, but for our hearts. Once He possesses that, everything else slowly begins to find its proper place. And that, perhaps, is the secret of the saints. They were not extraordinary because they did extraordinary things. They simply loved the right thing most.

With all the said, listen again to the words of Jesus in the Gospel passage this Sunday, with fresh ears. We understand the reason why he says what he says on a deeper level: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” 

So again let me ask you, who is the love of your life? 

Whenever I look at the photograph on the cover of this Sunday’s bulletin, I am filled with many emotions at once—happiness, gratitude, nostalgia, and also a deep sadness. It was taken in the fall of 2009 in Rome. We had gathered at a restaurant to celebrate the ordination of a friend. There was good wine, wonderful Italian food, and the easy laughter. The joy on our faces tells the story better than words.

At the time, everyone in the picture was still a seminarian, studying together for the priesthood. One of the great gifts of living in Rome, at the heart of the Catholic Church, is that you begin to see with your own eyes how truly universal the Church is. Men come from every corner of the world. In that photograph alone are seminarians from different parts of the United States, along with brothers from Iraq and Syria. Around that table, we were many nations, but one family.

And this is where the memory makes me sad. In the upper left-hand corner, with the circle around his face, is Mikele, then a seminarian from Syria. We became friends through our classes and over many conversations shared with cappuccinos during breaks. From time to time, he would come to the American seminary where we lived and join us for lunch. 

After our years of study, we all returned to our own countries to serve Christ and His Church as priests. For a long time I heard nothing of Fr. Mikele. Then one day, quite unexpectedly, a mutual friend called me. “I have terrible news,” he said. “Do you remember Fr. Mikele from seminary? He has been kidnapped by terrorists.”

I was stunned. Such things seem very far removed from our lives here in America, thanks be to God. Yet for many Christians throughout the world, they are terrible realities.

Fr. Mikele had been delivering supplies to one of our Catholic schools in Damascus, the capital of Syria, where the Islamic terrorist group Hezbollah was active. Though the danger was well known, he and other Catholics boarded a bus bound for the city. Along the way, armed men stopped the vehicle. They climbed aboard with rifles in their hands and slowly made their way down the aisle. Looking upon the frightened faces of the passengers, they pointed to the two Catholic priests, Fr. Mikele being one of them, and dragged them off the bus.

Not long afterward, the Archbishop of Damascus received a call demanding a ransom for the release of his priests. With great sorrow, he refused, knowing that yielding to such demands would only encourage further kidnappings. Fr. Mikele’s mother pleaded for her son’s freedom, but there was nothing she could do. The kidnappers wanted money—more money than anyone possessed.

Then, one day, the calls ceased. There was only silence. It has now been more than a decade since anyone has heard from Fr. Mikele. No letters. No messages. No word at all. Sadly, we must presume the worst.

I tell this story because my friend’s name will never appear in the headlines. He was not a famous man. He was a simple Catholic priest trying to serve his people in a dangerous part of the Lord’s vineyard. He was a good man, a prayerful man, and a man who loved Our Lord with his whole heart. Fr. Mikele reminds me of the words of Our Lord in this Sunday’s Gospel:

“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.… Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge.… So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.”

The world may forget such men. Newspapers may never print their names. But Heaven does not forget them. The Father who counts the hairs on our heads has surely not forgotten one of His faithful servants. And whether Fr. Mikele died at the hands of his captors or still lives in some hidden place known only to God, we may be certain of this: no act of love offered to Christ is ever lost, and no servant who acknowledges Him before men will be forgotten by the Master whom he served.

So do not worry and say, 'What are we to eat?'
or 'What are we to drink?' or 'What are we to wear?'
All these things the pagans seek.
Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
But seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness,
and all these things will be given you besides.
Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself.
Sufficient for a day is its own evil."
  -Matthew 6:25-34

It is one of the curious habits of God that He delights in beginning immense things with what appear to us very small beginnings. When Our Lord walked beside the Sea of Galilee and summoned twelve ordinary men to follow Him, Heaven itself was not improvising. This was no afterthought. The calling of the Twelve was the unfolding of a design hidden in the heart of God from the foundation of the world.

For the Lord who chose twelve disciples was the same God who had once chosen twelve tribes through the sons of Jacob. Israel had been called to gather the nations to the worship of the true God, yet now, in Christ, a new and greater Israel was being formed. The number itself was no accident. Jesus was gathering around Himself the beginnings of the Church, the family through whom the Father intended to bring salvation to the ends of the earth.

What is particularly astonishing is not merely that He called twelve men, but that He called such men. Fishermen, tax collectors, and zealots are hardly the material from which one would expect a kingdom to be built. Yet God has always preferred to display His strength through human weakness, so that the glory might be seen to belong to Him and not to His instruments.

The Twelve would become apostles, the first bishops of the Catholic Church, entrusted with teaching, sanctifying, and guiding the people of God. Through their ministry, and through those who succeeded them, the voice of Christ would continue to echo across the centuries. Thus, the Church is not an invention of men but the continuation of the Lord's own work in human history.

And perhaps there is a lesson here for each of us. Christ did not merely call twelve men long ago; He continues to call souls today. The same divine voice that summoned Peter from his nets summons us from our distractions and our little kingdoms. For God's great purpose has always been the same: to gather His scattered children into communion with Himself, until the whole world becomes, at last, one family in the household of the Father.

Such is the strange and marvelous way of God. He begins with twelve, and intends nothing less than the redemption of the world.

If we want to delve the depths of the Christian life, silence is a nonnegotiable. 

To enter into the mystery of the Eucharist – this baffling teaching that Jesus is truly and fully present in the “bread” and “wine” at each Holy Mass – one thing is required above all else: love. For love is not merely an affection; it is a kind of sight. It enables us to look through things rather than merely at them. Without love, we remain trapped upon the surface of reality, mistaking appearances for the whole truth.

Consider a bride and groom standing before one another on their wedding day. The guests may admire the elegance of the dress or the sharpness of the suit, but the true spectacle is elsewhere. It is written upon their faces. Their eyes are fixed upon one another with a gaze that seems almost to forget the rest of the world. To everyone else, the man is simply a man and the woman simply a woman—a son, a daughter, a friend, a relative. Yet to the lovers themselves, something more is revealed. Love has uncovered a depth invisible to the casual observer. They behold in one another a mystery, a significance, a glory that others can only dimly perceive.

Love, then, is not a departure from reality but an entrance into it.

This sheds light upon our Lord's question to His disciples: “Who do you say that I am?” One might paraphrase it: What do you see when you look at Me? The crowd had their answers. Some said John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. Their answers were not entirely wrong, but they remained upon the surface. They saw only what natural sight could perceive.

Then Peter spoke. By a grace granted from above, he looked beyond the ordinary features of the carpenter from Nazareth and exclaimed, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Peter had begun to see with the eyes of love. He perceived that the man standing before him was infinitely more than a man. Just as the bride sees more than a man in her beloved, Peter saw more than humanity in Jesus. He saw divinity concealed beneath humility.

The same question confronts us whenever we stand before the Eucharist.

What do you see?

Everything in our senses protests against the mystery. The eye sees bread. The tongue tastes bread and wine. The appearances remain stubbornly ordinary. Yet Christ's words in the sixth chapter of John's Gospel continue to confront every generation with the same unsettling challenge: “My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.” Many who heard Him could bear it no longer. They turned away, preferring a faith that remained within the boundaries of what could be easily understood.

Then Jesus asked the Twelve the question that every lover dreads to hear: “Do you also wish to go away?” Love never compels. It invites. It leaves room for refusal.

Peter's answer is one of the great declarations of love in all Scripture: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Notice that Peter does not claim to understand everything. He remains because he has come to know the One who stands before him. Love has carried him beyond mere appearances. He trusts the Person even when the mystery exceeds his understanding.

And so the question remains for us.

When you gaze upon the Eucharist, what do you see? Mere bread? A religious symbol? Or do you see, hidden beneath the veil of ordinary things, the relentless love of God pursuing His lost children? The saints saw Christ there—giving Himself without reserve, pouring Himself out for the life of the world.

What do you see?