Palm Sunday 2025

Bishop Scott Bullock
Homily from Palm Sunday
Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Rapid City
April 13, 2025

I’d like to invite you to join me for a thought experiment for just a moment. The Scriptures tell us that in the fullness of time God sent his Son for our salvation.  So, we know that the fullness of time was in Jerusalem some 20 centuries ago. But my thought experiment is, instead, what if the Lord was sent in our day for our eternal salvation in the same way?  The way the thought experiment goes is how might he have been executed? It would not have been on a cross, of course. We don’t use those anymore, thankfully, but it was the state instrument of execution. The Cross — which was the means by which Christ gave his life for us. 

So,  what about today? What would that be like? I can imagine maybe instead of a cross it might be an electric chair. Strap this enemy of the state in the electric chair and be done with him. And if that were the case, then maybe centuries from now people would be wearing, instead of Crucifixes, little electric chairs around their necks. 

I’m suggesting this only to try to impress the impact of what we do when we venerate and look at the Cross. It is absolutely an instrument of violent death and yet we venerate it all around us. Don’t we? If you look in this cathedral church, you can see crosses in all kinds of places. I’ve noticed them on the ends of the pews there. Of course, the Stations of the Cross are all around. Isn’t that strange how we venerate an instrument of brutal execution? It’s so much part of our imagination we may not even think about it anymore, but that’s what we’re doing. But we’re not so much venerating this brutal means of execution in general, we’re thinking about the one instance when the Lord took that on for us and considering that reality, that great sign of love. 

So, at the same time, we can look around our cathedral today and see some of the crosses covered. Seems a little jarring doesn’t it? We’re venerating the cross. We’re considering the cross and yet some of them are covered. This has been going on for the last week or so. I would like to suggest we do that for a couple reasons. The first one, as a parallel example, it’s akin to a eucharistic fast. Those present who are Catholic, that’s most of us, we know that we fast from food before receiving communion to heighten our desire for that amazing gift, and so in some ways the church is fasting from the images of the Cross to heighten our desire. To embrace that Cross. To receive it for our salvation. 

But secondly, besides that sense of fasting from the cross, there’s also a sense that the cross is going to be lived out right in our midst. For example, today we believe that when we remember and proclaim the Passion of Jesus it is as if it’s happening right now. This is the marvel of human memory. I’m sure you’ve had this experience before — when you begin to recount the experiences of something very treasured from your past, as you speak it’s almost like it’s here right? And so, when the Church recalls the saving path of Christ’s Crucifixion, we re-enter it in our memory, and it is as if it is happening right now. 

The covering of crosses, in a certain sense, first is like a fast, but secondly, it’s reminding us it’s happening. Let’s not look at that imitation, it’s happening right now as we remember it, and in a very real way, in a very substantial way, we believe that we touched the cross of Jesus when we received the whole Eucharist. It’s Christ representing his saving passion for our sake. 

And so, over these days it is fitting it’s right we turned away from the imitation images and we look right at the heart of Jesus on the Cross, and we do that because it is the supreme act of God’s love ever. We look squarely at it and we say, “Hosanna, hosanna.” The word means save. Save us. Save us. For where else can we go for the salvation that we need except right into the heart of God’s love which is the cross.