Daily Reflection for the Pontifical Mission Societies July 13,2026

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for July 13, 2026

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 Monday, July 13th. I’m coming to you from Mundelein Seminary in Chicago. Behind me, you see that tall column with the statue of Our Lady on top. That’s a replica here at Mundelein Seminary of the Piazza di Spagna, the Spanish Steps, in Rome, where in 1854, Blessed Pius the Ninth, after declaring the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, put a statue of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception on top of a huge pillar there. This is a replica here. And on the ground, beautiful statue of St. Joseph leading Jesus out to the synagogue, so that he could get to know, according to his humanity, the scriptures so much better. And we would We know that at a precocious young age, Jesus was dazzling the uh scholars of the law with his questions and with his answers. Today in the Gospel, that’s St. Jesus grown up is finishing his instructions to the first missionaries, to the apostles that he had chosen and sent them out. And he said, “Don’t think I’ve come to bring peace on Earth. I’ve come not to bring peace, but the sword.” Those are stark words. He says, “From now on, houses are going to be divided. Mothers against daughters, fathers against sons, mothers-in-law against daughters-in-law, etc.” No, not because he had come intentionally to divide, but because he would become a sign of contradiction. When he would come into the world, people would need to make a choice about what or whom their God would be, about who would be most important of all. And so then Jesus says, “Whoever loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever’s not willing to pick up his cross every day and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever is not willing to give his life for me is not worthy of me.” He wants to be our God. And once we do, we’re going to love our family members not less, but more. We’re going to love them with the Lord. We’re even going to be able to love our sufferings. We’re going to be able to love our and appreciate our life more when we recognize its value in being able to give it away for the Lord and even sometimes in the supreme sacrifice. At the very end of today’s gospel, Jesus talks about the reward that’s going to come. He says, “Whoever receives you receives me and receives the one who sent me. Whoever even gives you a cup of water because you’re my disciple will surely not lose his reward.” One of the most important things about the mission is that we just have the courage to go on out because if people open up their hearts to receive us, they’re not just receiving us, but they’re receiving God. That’s why we can’t proclaim the gospel just hidden introvertedly behind closed doors. Jesus is constantly saying to us, “Go. Go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Go to the whole world. Proclaim the gospel to every creature.” That’s something that Our Lady did as soon as she had received Jesus within at the Annunciation. She went with haste to her cousin Elizabeth, to John the Baptist, to Zechariah. It’s what Joseph was taking Jesus out to do, not just to pray on their own, but to go to the synagogues and make those pilgrimages of 60 miles from Nazareth to Jerusalem three times a year. That’s what the seminaries or seminarians are being formed to do here at Mundelein, to go out into the United States and renew it by the power of the gospel. That’s what missionaries everywhere are summoned to do, and that is in fact what they are doing. At the end of these instructions of Jesus, we rediscover the apostolic dimension of our own summons. That just as much as Jesus called those first 12, just as much as he calls the seminarians, just as much as he calls missionaries. He calls you and me to be instructed by the faith and to go out with haste to share this treasure with others. God bless you.

The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based on: