Daily Reflection for the Pontifical Mission Societies, August 8, 2025
7 months ago4 min read
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for August 8, 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. It is August 8th, the feast of St. Dominic of Guzmán.
Today in the Gospel, Jesus says some of the starkest words he has ever annunciated. He said that if we wish to be his disciple, his follower, his friend, we must deny ourselves, pick up our cross daily and follow him. That’s a big challenge to deny ourselves, to say I don’t know the man so that we can affirm Jesus, to pick up our cross. And we know that the cross was not just a little weight on the shoulder so that things would be marginally harder. It was an instrument of death, sometimes very difficult death. We need to be willing to die to ourselves so that He can live within us. That’s the condition to be able to follow Him.
And He then tells us why. He says, “For the one who would save his life must lose it. And the one who would lose his life for my sake and the sake of the Gospel will find it.” Jesus wants us to be capable of losing or giving our life for Him who first gave His life for us.
That’s what St. Dominic of Guzmán did. He was willing when he heard his vocation to leave nobility behind and follow the Lord as a Canon of the Cathedral of Osma, and then as a founder of a religious order, crisscrossing ancient Europe in order to share the Gospel especially with those who had wandered from the faith, the Albigensian heretics. And he founded the Order of Preachers which continues to serve the Church so beautifully over eight centuries later. It’s likewise what happens with missionaries. They themselves deny themselves, assume whatever sufferings are necessary each day, and give their lives for the Lord.
The Lord asked in the Gospel what profit would there be for a man to gain the whole world and lose his life in the process? That would be utter foolishness. And missionaries and Dominicans show us what it’s like to make the opposite choice, the really wise one, to give their lives for Christ so that they’re able to win an eternal treasure.
Today, we thank God for missionaries all across the world who show us that this choice, the choice that Jesus asked of us all, the choice that Dominic made, is still being made over and again. God bless you.
The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based was:
Jesus said to his disciples,
“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
take up his cross, and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world
and forfeit his life?
Or what can one give in exchange for his life?
For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory,
and then he will repay each according to his conduct.
Amen, I say to you, there are some standing here
who will not taste death
until they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom.”
