Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for August 3, 2025
Here is the video of today’s reflection:
The Youtube generated transcript for today’s reflection is:
I’m Monsignor Roger Landry, National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies here in Napa, California. It’s Sunday, August 3rd, and in the Gospel today, somebody’s going to cry out to Jesus with an inheritance dispute: “Jesus, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.” And rather than saying that, Jesus in reply corrected the one who had asked him and said, “Beware against all forms of greed.” And then Jesus tells a parable about a stupid guy who spends his whole life just trying to build greater grain bins. And he finishes with the moral of the parable: Don’t store up treasure in this world, but store up treasure for yourselves in Heaven. Are we storing up that treasure in Heaven? Is that our priority? Or are we trying to put our faith, hope, and love in man and the things of this world? The missionaries are the ones who are focused on the eternal pension plan. They’re the ones who are going throughout the whole world trying to help people to put their faith, hope, and love in God. They’re the ones who experience what true wealth is as they live by the vow and the spirit of poverty because they’ve discovered that Jesus is the pearl of great price and the treasure buried in a field worth everything they have. Hence today we pray for missionaries and we start to ask ourselves how are we going to store up for ourselves treasure in Heaven, to the extent that we’re in the middle of the world, to the extent that we’re making some money? Wouldn’t we be able to use some of that to transfer it not to the Cayman Islands not to an IRA but how about we transfer that to Heaven by generously giving it in order to support the works of the Church, the works of salvation, and in a particular way, to support the mission of the Church as we try to take the saving Gospel and the true wealth of who Jesus is out to the 1,124 missionary territories across the globe so that we can enrich their material and spiritual poverty with the most important stuff of all. God bless you.
The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based was:
Someone in the crowd said to Jesus,
“Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.”
He replied to him,
“Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?”
Then he said to the crowd,
“Take care to guard against all greed,
for though one may be rich,
one’s life does not consist of possessions.”
Then he told them a parable.
“There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest.
He asked himself, ‘What shall I do,
for I do not have space to store my harvest?’
And he said, ‘This is what I shall do:
I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones.
There I shall store all my grain and other goods
and I shall say to myself, “Now as for you,
you have so many good things stored up for many years,
rest, eat, drink, be merry!”’
But God said to him,
‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you;
and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’
Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves
but are not rich in what matters to God.”