Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for December 31, 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 with St. Patrick’s behind me. It’s the seventh day of Christmas and it is the last day of the year, December 31st. And on this last day of the civil year and the cusp of 2026, the church has us ponder St. John’s prologue. We heard this on Christmas morning, but it has greater significance in this last day of the civil year in which we go back to the very beginning. As we think about the last things in the passage of time, the church wants us to focus on in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God has us focus on what lasts so that we’re able to ground our whole life not on the passage of seconds into minutes into hours into days but to ground oursel on the eternity of the Lord and his extraordinary love for us. In that prologue, there are a couple things we could focus that the church wants us to ponder today. The first is the real meaning of Christmas. Sometimes people say that the reason for the season is Jesus. And they do that against the commercialization, for example, that’s all around us during the Christmas season. But that’s not really the meaning of Christmas. I don’t mean to shock you. The reason for the season of Christmas is not just Jesus, what Jesus wants to do in you and me. And St. John pens that. He describes that when Jesus came into the world, many didn’t accept him. But then he said to those who did accept them him, he gave them power to become children of God. Jesus wants us to become sons and daughters of God the father in him who is the eternally begotten son. Jesus wants to change us. In other words, he wants to transform us and through us transform the whole world. That’s the reason of the season. Not just that the word became flesh and dwelt among us. which is true, but that he dwelling within us wants to totally change our life dramatically for the better to make us not just sons and daughters of whoever our parents are, but sons and daughters of God. At the very end of this passage, he says something else St. John does about the passage of time. And he says, “From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace.” Jesus wants us to receive from his abundance. He wants us to have it all. He said he came into the world so that we might have life and have it to the full so that his joy might be in us and our joy perfected. Grace upon grace. 2025. We have received so many graces. Every day is itself a gift of the Lord. We’ve had the gift of the Jubilee of Hope. We’ve had the gift of births, for example, in our families and our extended families. We’ve had successes. We’ve likewise had crosses. But each of those has been meant to be a grace, an opportunity for us as creatures to enter into a far more deep relationship with the Lord who created us, redeemed us, and awaits us. We’ve got many more graces coming in 2026. We don’t know what they are, but we prepare in faith to receive them. Tonight, Pope Leo is going to be leading the church in a teday, a hymn of thanks from St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Let’s join him thanking the Lord for all the graces of 2025, especially the gift of himself every day to us. And let’s ask him for his help so that we might be good and fruitful soil for all the graces he wishes to implant in us in the year that comes. Merry Christmas a new and happy new year.
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came to be through him,
and without him nothing came to be.
What came to be through him was life,
and this life was the light of the human race;
the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.
A man named John was sent from God.
He came for testimony, to testify to the light,
so that all might believe through him.
He was not the light,
but came to testify to the light.
The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world,
and the world came to be through him,
but the world did not know him.
He came to what was his own,
but his own people did not accept him.
But to those who did accept him
he gave power to become children of God,
to those who believe in his name,
who were born not by natural generation
nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision
but of God.
And the Word became flesh
and made his dwelling among us,
and we saw his glory,
the glory as of the Father’s only-begotten Son,
full of grace and truth.
John testified to him and cried out, saying,
“This was he of whom I said,
‘The one who is coming after me ranks ahead of me
because he existed before me.’”
From his fullness we have all received,
grace in place of grace,
because while the law was given through Moses,
grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
No one has ever seen God.
The only-begotten Son, God, who is at the Father’s side,
has revealed him.