Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for July 21, 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 in the United States. It’s Tuesday, July 21st, the feast of the great Capuchin doctor of the church, Saint Lawrence of Brindisi. I’m coming to you from Mundelein Seminary in Chicago. Today’s gospel, Jesus is teaching in a house, almost certainly Simon Peter’s house in Capernaum. And somebody gives him the message saying, “Your mother and your brothers are outside waiting to see you.” First a parenthesis, there was no distinction in Hebrew between brothers and other types of relatives. They were all called kin. And so, we shouldn’t get confused as if Mary were not a perpetual virgin. She absolutely was. If she weren’t, as Saint Jerome said several 16 centuries ago, when Jesus was looking out from the cross, he wouldn’t have entrusted her to Saint John. He would have entrusted to one of her other children, who would have been responsible under the law to care for her. And likewise, some of those who are named his brothers are clearly his cousins because we have their mother, Mary the wife of Clopas, named in the gospel. Close parenthesis. “Your mother and your brothers are outside waiting to see you.” And Jesus used it as a teaching opportunity about the family he had come from heaven to earth to found. He said, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and observe it.” Mary, first and foremost, was one who heard the word of God and observed it. She heard it so much that it took on her own flesh. She said, “Let my whole life develop according to your word.” But Jesus wanted to found a family of those who, with Mary and under Mary, learned how to make their lives a commentary on the word of God, who listened to it such that they wanted to obey it, such that they wanted to become living exegetes of it. This is the family of faith that Jesus come from heaven to found. How well do we pay attention to the word of God? Do we listen to it in such a way that we want to live every aspect of it? Are we able to say honestly that we live of every word that comes from the mouth of God? That there’s no contradiction between what God says and our way of life. He wants to give us the help of the Holy Spirit precisely to live that way. That is what it means to be morally his brother and sister. We are as brother and sister by baptism. We are incorporated into God’s family, but while God is always going to be our father, he wants us morally to behave as his beloved sons and daughters. And that’s what Mary shows us how to do. This is something that missionaries themselves have heated. They’ve tried to live the word of God when Jesus sends us as his faithful ones out to lost sheep of house the house of Israel to the ends of the earth, they heard those his words to be done. We’re all called to hear those his words to be done. Likewise, those preferring to be priests here at Mundelein Seminary have heard the Lord calling them to give up so many of the beautiful things of the world in order to be his special portion in order that he might act through them in a particular way in the sacraments. And they’ve said yes. You and I likewise are called to become ever better members of his family. So that hearing the word of God, we might in fact do it and live as his brothers and sisters full time. Let’s pray through the intercession of St. Lawrence of Brindisi who did act on these words, who was a true family member, a brother of Jesus, and in fact a father in his family. Let’s ask for his intercession that we might all follow that example and find the joy that Mary and Lawrence and so many missionaries have found. God bless you.
The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based on:
Gospel
On the first day of the week,
Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early in the morning,
while it was still dark,
and saw the stone removed from the tomb.
So she 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 don’t know where they put him.”
Mary stayed outside the tomb weeping.
And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb
and saw two angels in white sitting there,
one at the head and one at the feet
where the Body of Jesus had been.
And they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”
She said to them, “They have taken my Lord,
and I don’t know where they laid him.”
When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there,
but did not know it was Jesus.
Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?
Whom are you looking for?”
She thought it was the gardener and said to him,
“Sir, if you carried him away,
tell me where you laid him,
and I will take him.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary!”
She turned and said to him in Hebrew,
“Rabbouni,” which means Teacher.
Jesus said to her,
“Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.
But go to my brothers and tell them,
‘I am going to my Father and your Father,
to my God and your God.'”
Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples,
“I have seen the Lord,”
and then reported what he told her.