Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for December 27, 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’s the third day of Christmas, December 27th, the feast of St. John the Evangelist. In today’s gospel, we focus on St. John on Easter Sunday morning after Mary Magdalene had given the extraordinary news that Jesus’s body wasn’t there in the tomb. Peter and John began to run to the tomb because John was considerably younger than Peter. John with characteristically youthful enthusiasm got to the tomb first. He very noly waited for St. Peter the leader of the apostle to arrive first and go on in. Peter St. John tells us saw the burial cloths and what wrapped around his head carefully placed there in the tomb. But then it said St. John saw and he believed. He knew exactly what that empty tomb meant. That Jesus had kept his words that on the third day he would rise. St. John is somebody who helps us with faith on this third day of Christmas. We focus on what he himself told us in the first chapter of his gospel as well as the first chapter of his first letter. In the gospel which we heard on Christmas Sunday morning in the churches throughout the globe, he said the word became flesh and dwelt among us. That is what the mystery of Christmas is from God’s perspective. God became one of us. He dwelt with us. He lived with us. He remained with us. Not just to hang with us but to hang for us. He ultimately came so that we would be able to have life to the full. And in his first letter, that’s what St. John announced to the first Christians and all those with whom they would share that letter. He said, “What we have heard, what we have seen with our own eyes, what we have touched with our hands concerning the word of life, we proclaim also to you.” He’s teaching us that we can’t keep the mystery of Christmas to ourselves. We have to share it with others. what we have seen and heard and touched with regard to the mystery of the Lord Jesus. Not just with regard to statues and manger scenes, but ultimately with response to the real Jesus still very much remaining with the in the Holy Eucharist, in the sacraments, in the word of God, in the church and others. We’ve got to announce to others. And at the very end of the passage that we hear in the first reading today, St. John says, “We proclaim it to you so that you might have fellowship with us. You might have communion with us because our communion is with the Father and the Son. We announce this because we want people to enter into a two-fold communion in communion with God and communion with us. This is the great work Jesus took on our humanity and was born in Bethlehem to bring about in us. And we not only respond to that message, but we become the missionaries of that message. Today we pray for missionaries sharing this message for the first time with so many across the globe. And we pray for all of us that this message may never become stale and so that we might use our eyes, our hands, our mouth, our ears to be able to spread the faith. God bless you.
The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based on:
Gospel
On the first day of the week,
Mary Magdalene ran and went to Simon Peter
and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them,
“They have taken the Lord from the tomb,
and we do not know where they put him.”
So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb.
They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter
and arrived at the tomb first;
he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in.
When Simon Peter arrived after him,
he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there,
and the cloth that had covered his head,
not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.
Then the other disciple also went in,
the one who had arrived at the tomb first,
and he saw and believed.