“Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.

I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise.

I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated. For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth."

-From an ancient homily, from an unknown priest.

Your priest, in the joy of the risen Lord,

Fr. Brian Soliven

I screamed at my neighbor today as he drove by in his silver convertible, top down, and music blaring. "HEY! Don't you know what happened today?" He just kept driving. Across the distance over the river, I saw another couple walking their dog along the bike path. I yelled again but they pretended not to hear me. "Don't you know who died?" Life seemingly went on a usual, a normal sunny, California spring afternoon.

Yet everything was different, even though the world kept turning without a care in the world. It's Good Friday, the Christians say. Did anyone notice? 

Holy Week launches with Palm Sunday. With blessed branches in hand, we mimic the exuberant crowds that welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem. However, shortly before that, the mood was entirely different. Sacred Scripture tells us that our Lord stood on the Mount of Olives as he gazed over the entire city, and cried: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!" (cf. Matthew 23:37). 

Here lies the problem of humanity from the very beginning with Adam and Eve -- we reject our creator, we reject our Father; we reject his son. Yet, God does not cease pursuing us, even when we betray him. Love cannot stop. So now Jesus enters into the heart of darkness, knowing precisely his crucifixion is at hand.

Holy Friends,

Jesus is a strange fellow. When he is told that "the one you love is ill,” and in danger of dying, you would think Jesus would act like a normal person, drop whatever he was doing, and go immediately to his friends bedside. After all, he loves him. Any of us would do that if we heard the same. Not Jesus. Oddly, the Gospel says that "he remained for two days in the place where he was." Why did he procrastinate?

When he finally arrives, a heartbreaking dialogue ensues between Martha and Jesus: "“Lord, if you had been here,

You see, sin has caused us to construct our own graves for ourselves. We hid in shame because of what we've done in our past. We preoccupy our lives over to things which we think will give us life but only lead to death. Like Lazarus, all of humanity is trapped within the tombs of our own making. Jesus has come to break us free. He calls out to each one of us, "COME OUT!" Come out of your tombs my brothers and sisters. "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die." (John 11:25)

I'm not going to lie; having our first official Mass during the quarantine lockdown hurt mightily. Your faces were nowhere to be found. My dear people, the flock entrusted to me by Jesus Christ seemed scattered to the wind, leaving behind only empty wooden pews. "I wonder where you are at this moment?" I thought to myself. Only God knows. Indeed, only He knows the outcome of our current scourge. Is He not in control? Can His will still be found in this mess?

"LETS GET (MESSED) UP! LETS GET (MESSED) UP!", was the chant the crowd deliriously howled at the "Night in the Country" music festival in Yearington, Nevada. In perfect unison, nearly 15,000 concert-goers regurgitated this phrase over and over, but the word they preferred was a tad more expletive. The crude war cry, echoed for miles around that little sleepy desert town. In the midst of it all, Jordan stood silent. Unlike his friends and the strangers around who were swept up by the emotion of the masses, a wave of disgust came over him instead. "This is idolatry," he whispered to himself. "They're worshipping debauchery." There has to be more to life than this... 

If your Lent is easy, you're doing it wrong. The threefold pillars of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving is engineered to strike at the source of our dysfunction -- pride. And pride, my friends, never goes quietly into the dark night.

Death is certain for us all. The ashes we receive during the beginning of the holy season of Lent, remind us of this inconvenient fact. The fasting, almsgiving, and prayer that we do during this time is meant to shift our eyes on Heavenly things. All things will fade. Only God remains. We are called to live it.

It's estimated that men spent 11.4 Billion dollars this past Valentine's Day on gifts for their significant other. That's a lot of expensive chocolates and flowers! When we break it down, each man on average doled out a whopping $153.65. As commercially laden this holiday has become, the heart of this spending is actually stunningly biblical. Genesis 1:26 reveals that each person is created in God's "image and likeness." Stamped within every human being is is the God-given gift of free will which makes love possible. Love is always a choice; it can never be forced.

That is why men spend billions of dollars -- to woo the heart of the beloved. God is no different. Faced with our free will, He now must entice humanity to freely choose Him. How? We need only look at Jesus crucified. He could have easily saved us through a paper cut on his thumb but instead allowed himself to tortured in the cruelest of ways. Jesus dying on the cross is God's spectacularly wild take of expensive chocolates and flowers.

The most influential book in human history is the Holy Bible. Through God's revelation, Western Civilization would arise and eclipse all others. But where did this mysterious book come from? Who put it together? In this presentation, we explore the Bible's historical development and how its saving revelations still influences our world today.