Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for July 23, 2026
Here is the video of today’s reflection.
The YouTube generated transcript for today’s reflection is:
I am Monsignor Roger Landry, national director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States. It’s Thursday, July 23rd, the feast of St. Bridget of Sweden, and I’m coming to you from Mundelein Seminary in the Archdiocese of Chicago. In today’s gospel, Jesus asked by his disciples, “Why do you speak to everybody in parables?” It’s a good question that many still today have. “Why, Jesus, don’t you speak directly? Why do you use so many stories?” And he says that the ultimate reason why he does this is so that people looking might not see and hearing might not hear lest they convert. Now, at first, that sounds a little paradoxical, but Jesus tells us parables so that we have to put the work in. If he uses images, let’s just say the sower and the seed or the wheat and the weeds or the yeast or the treasure buried in a field or the dragnet or the others that we’re going to be hearing coming on up. We have to wonder what he is referring to by each of these images. We have to put the work into it. And there are many who are just not going to want to do the work. They’re going to hear the parable of the sower and the seed and shrug and say, “Who cares what those four soil samples are? Who’s Who cares who the sower is? Who cares what that seed is?” Jesus uses these parables and so that when we listen we need to begin to wonder. We need to begin to question. We need to enter into conversation with what he’s saying rather than just let it slip through the other ear. He wants us to convert. But if we are going to hear the words with the receptivity to a new life, that’s going to be shown in how we’re going to engage with the images he employs in the parables. That’s what always happens you tell stories. That’s what happens with fictional writers. Everybody’s wondering whether they’re referring to real events. That’s what happens with extended allegories. When Jesus tells the parable of the prodigal son, we’ve got to see ourselves in the father, in the younger son and the older one. When he tells the parable of the good Samaritan, we need to see ourselves in the man left dead. We need to see ourselves in the one who cares for that man left dead. We need to see ourselves in the inn. Jesus uses these parables precisely to draw us even more deeply into the mysteries than declarative speech alone would give us. Missionaries as they go throughout the world try to explain these parables just like the deacon Saint Philip explained Isaiah to the Ethiopian eunuch eunuch as he was in the chariot. People have questions about what this means. And then we’re able to explain it to them. Here at Dunwoody Seminary, priests are being formed as preachers to be able to echo those parables as well as to apply them to our own life. As we hear the word of God, whether it’s a parable or whether it’s a straight-up declarative sentence by Jesus, let’s ask for the grace to engage that word, to engage the spirit who has helped the evangelist keep those words, and to engage with the word made flesh, Jesus himself, so that we might recognize he has the words of eternal life and follow him who is that way, truth, resurrection, and the life all the way to a place even more beautiful than what you’re looking at behind me. God bless you.
The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based on:
Gospel
The disciples approached Jesus and said,
“Why do you speak to the crowd in parables?”
He said to them in reply,
“Because knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven
has been granted to you, but to them it has not been granted.
To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich;
from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away.
This is why I speak to them in parables, because
they look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand.
Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in them, which says:
You shall indeed hear but not understand,
you shall indeed look but never see.
Gross is the heart of this people,
they will hardly hear with their ears,
they have closed their eyes,
lest they see with their eyes
and hear with their ears
and understand with their hearts and be converted
and I heal them.
“But blessed are your eyes, because they see,
and your ears, because they hear.
Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people
longed to see what you see but did not see it,
and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”