We’re standing on the shoulders of all these great believers

Bishop Scott Bullock
Homily from the Solemnity of Immaculate Conception
Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Rapid City
December 8, 2025

The last opportunity I had to live with my parents was between my first and second of five years in seminary. The second through fifth years were going to be kind of far from home so this was my last chance to be with them and so I went home to their place in Michigan and lived with them. That summer I got a job working on an assembly line at one of the auto plants. That was interesting. Lots of free time. I decided to fill up my free time by planting a large garden on their ten acres. There was a lot of exuberance in my heart. It wasn’t a small garden. So, I went over to the neighbors and borrowed their John Deere tractor with their huge rototiller, and I don’t know how much I piled up for the garden, but it was big. I planted all kinds of vegetables, even some beautiful flowers there, and then I learned, probably from the first time in my adult life, the dynamic of the weed. Apparently, my rototiller dig did not remove the weed seeds from the ground and the wind blew in some more later, and it quickly overtook the garden. Before long, a few of my vegetables were peeking out from underneath this immense growth of weeds, and they didn’t grow to their potential. It became a battle in the garden for the nutrients and the water, and the weeds won.

On this Feast of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, what we proclaim is that in order that God’s entire life could be born into the world, into that seed bed which was Mary, there could be no obstacle to life there. There could be no, shall we call, weeds of sin because the vision and the mission was so extraordinary and so complete that there could be no obstacle to life in her. God, wanting the perfect birth of life into the world, and Jesus, who restores all of our life, then prepared Mary, from the moment of her conception, that there would be no obstacle in her vocation to bear life to the world. 

As it turns out, every feast day of Mary really is in its essence about the Son Jesus, isn’t it? The Immaculate Conception is that grace given to Mary from the moment of her conception so that she could bear Jesus, the life of the world in its completeness, with no obstacle.

In 1858, that young French girl Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes was given a vision of the blessed Virgin Mary, who told her, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

With such purity of heart, she was able to receive that message and bear it to the world in some ways reflecting the one that she saw. And even more, the Church, which Jesus promised would not be defeated by the wiles of the devil, was able to receive that teaching in purity because of the presence of the Holy Spirit. The Church, too, in a certain sense was born from its beginning in Mary as a sinless vessel to receive Christ.

So, today we again celebrate the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, and what we are doing is proclaiming the one who bore life and its perfection to the world for us. And we ask that the Mother of God will increase in our hearts new gifts of faith, hope, and love so that our hearts might be prepared to receive the Lord and bear the Lord for this is our mission first set forth by our blessed mother Mary — to be vessels that receive the Lord and share the Lord.