Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for December 23, 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. Coming to you from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Behind me, two great figures, two Theresas. Theresa, the child Jesus and the Holy Face, the co-patronist of the missions. St. Theresa, the child Jesus, we call her, and St. Teresa of Calcutta, the great missionary of charity, who shows us that we exist like she did for a mission of love. In today’s gospel on December 23rd, two days before Christmas, we have the scene of the birth of St. John the Baptist. And as he was being brought for circumcision on the eighth day, everybody thought he would be named Zechariah Jr. after his father Zechariah. But Zechariah had by this point been struck mute. And St. Elizabeth said, “No, John is his name.” That name John means God does grace. God is gracious. That God allows us to enter into a lifechanging communion with him according to our nature as creatures. That’s what the word grace means. It’s not a thing. It’s a relationship. God does grace. God makes grace. God invites us into grace. That’s precisely what the whole mystery of Christmas is about for which John who was circumcised in this morning’s gospel. John announced. Today we’ve got to ponder the type of grace that God continues to make in your life and mine and in the world. He has done everything. His incarnation, his hidden life, his birth, his passion, his death, his resurrection, all of it was to make a relationship with him possible. He did it to make grace. And so even though your name and mine might not be John, God has done grace in your life and mine too. And God through the missionaries all across the globe wants to do grace in everybody’s life. And that’s why we pray for the missionaries especially those who are taking the gospel for the first time to missionary territories. And we ask God to grant everybody to whom the good news of great joy is about to be pronounced tomorrow night to be able to receive it well. To be able to receive it like our Lady and St. Joseph did, to receive it like eventually Zechariah and Elizabeth did. So that each of us, as John the Baptist would later do, could become a precursor of the Lord, a precursor in conception, a precursor in birth, a precursor in baptism, a precursor in suffering, a forerunner even in death. This is the great mystery that we enter into two days before Christmas. God bless you.
The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based on:
Gospel
When the time arrived for Elizabeth to have her child
she gave birth to a son.
Her neighbors and relatives heard
that the Lord had shown his great mercy toward her,
and they rejoiced with her.
When they came on the eighth day to circumcise the child,
they were going to call him Zechariah after his father,
but his mother said in reply,
“No. He will be called John.”
But they answered her,
“There is no one among your relatives who has this name.”
So they made signs, asking his father what he wished him to be called.
He asked for a tablet and wrote, “John is his name,”
and all were amazed.
Immediately his mouth was opened, his tongue freed,
and he spoke blessing God.
Then fear came upon all their neighbors,
and all these matters were discussed
throughout the hill country of Judea.
All who heard these things took them to heart, saying,
“What, then, will this child be?
For surely the hand of the Lord was with him.”