Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for July 31, 2025
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 here in Napa, California. It’s July 31st, the Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola, one of the greatest saints who has ever lived. He was, after the battle of Pamplon in 1521, convalescing when a cannonball basically destroyed his right tibia, his right lower leg. He had read the romances of the day, the knight chivalry novels, and the only books left in the entire castle where he was convalescing was the Life of Christ and the Life of the Saints. So he began with the Lives of the Saints and eventually after having read several of them he asked an incredibly consequential question: “Why can’t I do what Francis of Assisi has done? Why can’t I do what Dominic of Guzmán has done?” And he could do that strengthened by the same grace that had strengthened those tremendous saints. In today’s Gospel, Jesus talks about the Kingdom of Heaven like a drag net that’s thrown out into the ocean that is able to collect good fish and bad, but they cast out the net and they bring everybody in. We can be just like Ignatius of Loyola’s roommate in college, Francis Xavier, and cast out those nets. We can be like the North American college, the North American martyrs. We can be like St. Junípero Serra, who came up and down the coast of California. There’s no reason why we can’t be. Today on the Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. We pray for all missionaries. We thank the Lord for the great waves of Jesuit missionaries until this day. And we ask the Lord that we might take as seriously our vocation as St. Ignatius did. God bless you.
The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based was:
Jesus said to the disciples:
“The Kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea,
which collects fish of every kind.
When it is full they haul it ashore
and sit down to put what is good into buckets.
What is bad they throw away.
Thus it will be at the end of the age.
The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous
and throw them into the fiery furnace,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”
“Do you understand all these things?”
They answered, “Yes.”
And he replied,
“Then every scribe who has been instructed in the Kingdom of heaven
is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom
both the new and the old.”
When Jesus finished these parables, he went away from there.