Daily Reflection for the Pontifical Mission Societies, July 18, 2026

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for July 18, 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 of the United States. It is Saturday, July 18th, and I’m coming to you from Mundeline Seminary before the tomb of Edward Hines, who died in World War I and whose parents gave much of the money to develop Mundeline Seminary when Cardinal Mundeline was the Archbishop of Chicago. Today in the gospel, it tells us that the scribes and the Pharisees went on out and began to conspire to have Jesus killed. They did it because of what Jesus said about the Sabbath that we heard yesterday, that he was lord even of the Sabbath, that he was violating what they thought was the way that the Sabbath should be lived. They thought the way the Sabbath should be lived with no work whatsoever, including works of love, including works that are necessary for survival. So they complained when he healed people on the Sabbath because they  cared more about the Sabbath than they did about people who were injured waiting another day. They criticized Jesus because the the apostles were starving and they plucked off the heads of grain in order to thresh it and eat it. So starving were there. They didn’t really care about the human beings that were involved. only their man-made rules about how they have about how the Sabbath should be kept holy. It wasn’t that God had given those rules. They made those rules and they were going to insist upon them more than ultimately the rule of love and the rule of mercy. St. Matthew tells us that after they went on out, Jesus went about everywhere teaching and healing. He wasn’t going to be stopped by them. He was going to go on with the mission he had come into the world to complete. And many of the disciples looking at him and the way that he did it, meek and humble of heart, saw the application of the suffering servant psalm from Isaiah 53. Behold my servant in whom I’m well pleased, my chosen one in whom I delight. Jesus would be that son of God who would please the father so much that he would go about not quenching a wick that was still burning in the embers, not breaking a bruised reed until all people should hear the Lord’s salvation and in him prophetically it says all the Gentiles shall hope that the gospel was going to be brought not just to the lost sheep of the house of Israel but the gospel was going to be brought all across the globe to all nations. This is an incredibly consoling message that Jesus himself when people were trying to get into his way, when they were trying to redefine what was really pleasing to God, Jesus insisted and he went on healing, preaching, loving. And he did so fulfilling all of sacred scripture and bringing the treasure of the faith not just to God’s chosen people, the Jews, those he had prepared to receive the Messiah, but to all peoples everywhere. Jesus is still very much interested in a hundred sheep out of 100 sheep out of 8.1 billion out of 8.1 billion. Missionaries are those who continue that work of the savior sometimes likewise in the face of some brutal opposition. There are missionaries who die every year trying to spread the faith and those being prepared at Mundeline Seminary. Future priests are likewise being sent on out and sometimes they too will suffer opposition. But we continue the work of Jesus. And you and I are supposed to learn these lessons too. first to receive what Jesus wishes to do for us in every age through his mystical body, the church, and then be so transformed that out we go to bring this message to Gentiles everywhere as their hope. God bless you.

The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based on:

Gospel