Palm Sunday (2025)
Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel prize-winning peace activist, wrote that, “The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.” Indifference, a lack of concern or a refusal to act in the face of injustice, is at the heart of human suffering. And Saint Maximilian Kolbe (who was executed by the Nazis in 1941, after having offered his own life to save another condemned prisoner) also once described indifference as “the most deadly poison of our times.”
In most cases, our indifference looks like comfort or complacency and a sense that “I shouldn’t get involved” or “it isn’t my business”… We can also see how these attitudes allow injustice, abuse, and neglect to continue and increase in too many places in the world today.
However tempting it might be to pretend otherwise, there are things worth living for, suffering for, and even dying for. That’s what Jesus is showing us in these holy days.
The discomfort, sadness, and pain we might feel if we open our hearts and pay attention to what is happening in and to the world around us are the only real antidote to indifference because those feelings also have the power to call us to action. And Palm Sunday and Holy Week reveal for us a God who, in Jesus, was anything but indifferent. As Saint Paul reminds us: “He humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7a, 8).
These holy days also remind us that Christianity can’t be reduced to a set of doctrines or moral absolutes. Instead, being a Chrisitan—being a disciple of Jesus—is a way of believing and being that calls us out of ourselves and confronts our ideas about how the world should be.
Holy Week teaches us what love looks like.
In his Spiritual Diary, Blessed Francis Jordan, founder of the Salvatorians, wrote that “The works of God prosper only in the shadow of the cross.” This is a powerful image because, while it acknowledges the reality of the cross—including self-emptying and even death—it also speaks of a light shining behind and beyond the cross. The cross is not where our journey ends.
The cross and its shadow are there, yes, but looking toward that shining light, we already glimpse the joyful light of Easter which illumines every moment of Holy Week and all of life.
*This homily was preached at Divine Savior Holy Angels High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on April 12, 2025
Almighty ever-living God,
who as an example of humility for the human race to follow
caused our Savior to take flesh and submit to the Cross,
graciously grant that we may heed his lesson of patient suffering
and so merit a share in his Resurrection.
Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.
-Collect for Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord
