Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for July 27, 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 Monday, July 27th, the memorial of Blessed Titus Brandsma, one of the martyrs during the Holocaust. And I’m coming to you from Mundelein Seminary in Chicago. Today in the gospel, we continue to be immersed in one of my favorite chapters of the gospels, the 13th chapter of Saint Matthew, which is a chapter full of parables about the kingdom. We had it yesterday on Sunday. We’re having it likewise, coincidentally, in the daily mass lectionary throughout the end of last week and the beginning of this week. In today’s gospel, we have two parables of the kingdom, both about the way that the kingdom grows. First parable, Jesus says that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. It’s one of the smallest of seeds, and that’s true if you’ve ever had mustard seeds in your hand, super, super tiny. But eventually, when planted, it can become one of the largest of shrubs, where all the birds of the air can come and find their rest. And then the second is that the kingdom of God is like leaven that a woman put with three measures of dough, and that tiny little bit of yeast made the whole dough rise. Jesus describes that the kingdom of God often starts small. Starts, for example, with one woman, 14 years old in Nazareth, like Mary, who says yes to God, and the kingdom grows from there. Starts with just 12 nobodies, whom he called to be his first apostles in Galilee. And then they went out through the entire world and built the church. It starts sometimes with a few families in a parish who get together and want to build a community of faith, and eventually, not just only build a parish church, but build a real community of living stones built on Christ the cornerstone, which changes their entire village or neighborhood, can start with one religious founder. Like we’ll celebrate this week on Friday, St. Ignatius of Loyola or St. Francis of Assisi or St. Dominic or St. Clare or St. Teresa of Calcutta. One person with a charism who eventually gets other people to come around and they become huge religious orders that are able to serve as much as the seeds in 11 all across the globe lifting everybody up. We shouldn’t be intimidated. We shouldn’t be worried if in certain areas the church is small or even in areas where the church was once very strong that it’s become a smaller flock. The image of the mustard seed can begin again. And so, for example, in different parts of the United States, my native region of Massachusetts in New England, we’ve had to reduce a lot of parishes. The church has become numerically smaller. That, if you were looking at it in just business terms, would be really super bad news. But the Lord in that is allowing us to experience again that mystery of the mustard seed and the yeast. We can begin smaller and we can grow bigger than heretofore. That’s the mystery of the power of the kingdom. When individuals and small groups say yes to the extraordinary power of God, then God through them can build something great and lasting. Each of us is supposed to be a mustard seed. Each of us is supposed to be a little bit of yeast. One Catholic on a work floor can change the entire dynamic. One Catholic family on a street can change that street. A handful of us in a city can change the entire tenor of the city. And one missionary can change the fortunes of millions. God bless you.
The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based on:
Gospel
Jesus proposed a parable to the crowds.
“The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed
that a person took and sowed in a field.
It is the smallest of all the seeds,
yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants.
It becomes a large bush,
and the ‘birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.’”
He spoke to them another parable.
“The Kingdom of heaven is like yeast
that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour
until the whole batch was leavened.”
All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables.
He spoke to them only in parables,
to fulfill what had been said through the prophet:
I will open my mouth in parables,
I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation
of the world.