New Perspective: New Model to Follow - April 17, 2025

My friends, tonight is about service. Can we find a way to serve some other person in our community who feel completely left out? Some neighbor who feels estranged, maybe have lost a spouse, there is nowhere else to go. Can we love them where they are and get down low and serve them and realize that this is a new perspective for us. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for Holy Thursday - Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper. Please feel free to share this with others.

Join us tonight at 7:00pm here at St. Simon for the Living Stations of the Cross and Communion Service.

Defining Moments - April 13, 2025

The scriptures are a collection of defining moments for the Jewish and the Christian people. They have been put together for the most defining moments of our history. The Gospels are collection of defining moments of Jesus' life. And today's Gospel is a bevy of collective and of defining moments. We have multitude of them, not only just for Jesus, but for others. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion. Please feel free to share this with others.

Many prayers for all of us as we enter the holiest week of our church year.

God Bless,

Fr. Brendan

Showing Up - April 6, 2025

Today, more than ever, we need to be people who are willing to show up, to show up and not save people, not to rescue them, but to be present to them in the midst their suffering. Whether it be from a divorce or whether it be from a rejection of their family, or whether they are immigrants and they feel no longer welcomed, or whether they feel left out on the sides of society. Our job is to show up, to show the loving presence of God to them. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent. Please feel free to share this with others.

Love Not Lectures - April 6, 2025

All of us have made mistakes. We have all done something that was wrong, whether a little thing when we were a child or something older. We will always remember how we were treated in that moment of shame, that moment of being caught. That moment can shame us and maim us, or it can transform us into something much better, something more profound. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent. Please feel free to share this with others.

Coming to His Senses - March 30, 2025

Sometimes we find it hard to accept that God would forgive us for our mistakes. Sometimes when we hurt somebody who we really love and we know we have hurt them and we ask for forgiveness from the Lord, we ask in a sense why did I do that? And we want almost to be punished a little bit because we know we were wrong. So we find it hard to sometime accept. But hopefully we will finally accept God’s forgiveness for us. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent. Please feel free to share this with others.

Darkness Can Be Our Friend - March 30, 2025

Sometimes the darkness in our lives can be in fact our friend, because it allows us to focus only on what we need to focus on.Today we have this reading, this classic reading of the man born blind in his blindness. Here is the irony. Here is a man who is born blind, who cannot see, and yet he sees Jesus for who he really is and calls him the son of God. The Pharisees and the scribes can see, but they do not see Jesus for who he really is. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent for the Second Scrutiny. Due to the Scrutinies, this is a bonus homily for this week. Please feel free to share this with others.

Thin Places and Holy Ground - March 23, 2025

Our lives have become so busy and even about the good things, we can be so busy, we miss God speaking to us at these liminal moments where God is trying to say something different than what we want to hear. It might be saying something challenging that we do not want to hear. It is those moments when we are called to pause like Moses and approach it and take courage to lean in and to move closer to this space. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the third Sunday of Lent. Please feel free to share this with others.

Living Water for All - March 23, 2025

We are called to take the living waters, take the bread of life that we receive from here, and to share it with those who so desperately need that fresh living water. You and I might be the only person this week who offers it to them. If you get an inkling to be kind and gentle and not judgmental to someone in any of those categories, then this is your moment. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the third Sunday of Lent. This homily was given at the First Scrutiny for our OCIA candidates for this year. Please feel free to share this with others.

Come To Know Christ and Love Him - March 16, 2025

“Who do people say that I am?” The apostles first say, you are Elijah or John the Baptist, or one of the other prophets. But then he asks them, he says, “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter, the one who confesses says, “You are the son of the living God. You are the Messiah.” Jesus must say, yes, finally he gets it. He must be delighted after all these three years. So he takes him up a mountain with his two closest apostles, James and John, and reveals himself to them. He assures them that he is the son of God. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the Second Sunday of Lent. Our own Lenten journey has begun and our Parish Lenten Retreat is now available for replay on Livestream (watch videos).

Who We Are Is the Core of Our Identity - March 9, 2025

How we refocus ourselves this Lent is not about our will. It is not us trying to will ourselves back and pushing away the devil in some dramatic fashion. Just come back to who we are. Come back to the fact that we are children of God and that God is our father. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the First Sunday of Lent. Our own Lenten journey has begun. I hope you can join us this year. Please feel free to share with others.

I am a Sinner. I am a Hypocrite - March 5, 2025

What we do today is put ashes on our forehead. Not to have a badge of honor that says, “Look at me. I am one of the Catholic ones.” We put ashes on our forehead to remind us to say, “I am a sinner. I am a hypocrite.”But we do not stay there. We do this at the beginning of this Lenten journey. Then the rest of this Lenten journey, we focus on turning back to the Lord, (Read more…) 

Here is my homily for Ash Wednesday. Our own Lenten jpurney has begun. I hope you can join us this year. Please feel free to share with others.

Love Your Enemies - February 23, 2025

Jesus reorders life. He quotes the golden rule. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” That was in the Book of Deuteronomy as one of the laws of the Lord. But he takes it a step further. He deepens it and calls his disciples, the ones who call themselves Christian, to have a higher standard, a deeper reality. He says it is not enough, to love just your family. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time. Please feel free to share with others.

Guardians of Beauty and Prophets of Truth - February 16, 2025

Pope Francis has declared 2025 a Jubilee Year of Hope, a timely reminder that even in the face of immense suffering in our world, we are not abandoned, Jesus always accompanies us and most especially in our times of suffering. The cross stands at the center of our faith, not as a symbol of defeat, but as a sign of ultimate hope. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time. I apologize for the lateness of this which I delivered while on a pilgrimage to Rome. I hope you can still enjoy it and please feel free to share with others.

Limitation to Invitation to Abundance - February 9, 2025

You can hear a sense of frustration in today’s gospel with Peter. Peter has been working hard all night with his friends, he says they were up all night and caught absolutely nothing. Then here comes Jesus. Remember, Jesus is a carpenter and he is telling the fishermen what to do. You can see how outrageous this sounds. So you can imagine what Peter is feeling, “Like really ? Put out again? Really! I have been working hard and I know my job. I know this Sea of Galilee pretty well and I have been doing this fishing thing a while.” (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time. This weekend we launche the Annual diocesan Appeal as well a Baptism. Please feel free to share with others.

The Marian and Christian Way - February 2, 2025

Mary watched her son suffer greatly. This prediction by the prophet Simeon is very real. The climax of that suffering for her was at the foot of the cross. We have to examine this because it is very important how Mary suffered. It was not just that she suffered but how she suffered and gave witness to us. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the Presentation of the Lord. I am sorry this is later than usual as I was away giving a retreat at Sts. Peter and Paul in Rocklin, CA on From Here to Eternity: How to Live and Die Well.   Please feel free to share with others.

Dialogue With Scripture - January 26, 2025

Jesus is the fulfillment of the scripture. Jesus is the bright light that leads us to see all other lights. He is the one who enables us to see what God is fulfilling in our lives. So Jesus, in a sense, God becomes our north star, if you would, that we look to seek in this sky of lights. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the Third Sunday of Ordinary time. Please feel free to share with others.

Abundant Joy In Life - January 19, 2020

In today's Gospel, Jesus turns everything around. He takes six stone jars fills them with water and turns that water into wine. These jars would have held 20 to 30 gallons each. Just to give you an understanding of how much wine we are talking about. He produced 600 to 800 bottles of wine! That is a lot of joy! (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the Second Sunday of Ordinary time. Please feel free to share with others.

In You I Take Delight - January 12, 2025

We need to hear this message of delight because we hear all the other messages, all the other negative messages, the competitive ones on online, how good everyone else is and not how good we are. Let’s combat it with a message of love. Let’s say to one another “You are my beloved one, with whom I am well pleased, with whom I am delighted.” (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the Baptism of the Lord. Please feel free to share with others. Happy 2025 to all of you!

Change Your Perspective - January 5, 2025

There are layers of irony here that Matthew is trying to communicate to his Jewish audience, kind of waking them up. “Hey, hello. It is the Messiah. The Messiah was born. You need to go to Jerusalem. You need to leave Jerusalem and go to Bethlehem.” But they missed the point. Why did they miss the point? It is because they are so rooted in their own belief, their own perspective. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the Epiphany of the Lord. Please feel free to share with others.

Happy 2025 to all of you!

Wisdom and Joy: Hold Onto Love - December 29, 2024

With the passing of time we certainly grow in age, but we do not always necessarily grow in wisdom. There are no guarantees that wisdom comes with age! It is one of those things that is an opportunity for us, but we have to apply the lessons that happen in our life in order for us to gain the wisdom from those moments. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the Feast of the Holy Family. Please feel free to share with others.

I hope you are enjoying this time with family and friends!

Make Room In Your Heart for the Story of Jesus - December 25, 2024

Today , we stop and we share what we believe is the greatest story ever told. The story of Jesus Christ being born among us. And right from the very beginning, there is a twist. And the twist is that God, the Author of life, the author of the Book of Life, enters into the story himself. He becomes one of the twists. (Read More)

Here is my homily for the Nativity of The Lord. Please feel free to share with others. Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Hear the Voice of the Father and Believe What we Hear - December 22, 2024

Mary believed! She just did not just hear, she heard and believed. And so we too must be willing to hear and then to believe what we hear. We will need to hear and believe that we are a beloved child of God. And we are called to go share that love with others today. Not in some future year, not in some future time, but today. (Read more…)

Here is my homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent. Please feel free to share with others.

What is Stealing Your Joy - December 15, 2024

Stuff comes in life and stuff happens! It is hard to, in a sense, frolic and enjoy life. Joy is not about circumstances. Joy is not about what happens to us. Joy is about what we choose when stuff is happening to us. Joy is a response that we have regardless of what is happening to us. (Read more…)

Here is my homily from the Third Sunday of Advent. Please feel free to pass it on.

God bless,

Fr. Brendan

Health of the Spiritual Heart - December 8, 2024

Our parish theme for the whole year is “Be still and know that I am God.” But during the advent period it is to be still and be joyful with the Lord. In the current secular climate today, we have the craziness and the busyness of Christmas. We cannot stop all the shops doing what they need to do and to try to get us ramped up and amped up on all the purchasing. But we can take a rest from it and to be still with the Lord. (Read more…)

Here is my homily from the Second Sunday of Advent. Please feel free to pass it on.

God Waits For Us - December 1, 2024

We are called in a more profound way to not try to change all the circumstances outside. We are not going to change the secular world, we are not going to change the stores. If they have goods to sell and they are going to start selling it. But we can change our attitude. See the difference between heaven and earth is not about altitude. It is about attitude. (Read more…)

Here is my homily from the First Sunday of Advent. Please feel free to pass it on.