Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for June 3, 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. It’s June 3rd, the feast of the Ugandan Martyrs, and I’m coming to you from St. Michael Parish in Low, Massachusetts, where I grew up, where I was baptized, made my first holy communion, received my priestly vocation right here, speaking of Jesus in prayer from this tabernacle when I was four. When I had watched the pastor at the time, Father Kentwell, give God to all those who were old enough to receive Holy Communion. And I said, “Jesus, priest must be the luckiest person in the whole universe, capable of holding you and giving you to others.” That was the day I asked for a priestly vocation. And that was the day the Lord implanted within me a deep desire to be a priest. And so, it’s great to be broadcasting this reflection from this place of so many graces for me. Today in the gospel, Jesus talks to us about the resurrection. The Sadducees who were Jews who didn’t believe in the resurrection because they only accepted the first five books of the Bible. And they claimed that those first five books didn’t give any witness to the resurrection, the resurrection of anybody, not just eventually the resurrection of Jesus or the resurrection of the Ugandan martyrs or the resurrection of you and me. If we follow Jesus all the way to the eternal right side of the father, they approach Jesus with this absurd question because in the book of Genesis, it says that when God joins us to somebody in marriage, we become one flesh with that person. So they told the story of a woman who had been married to seven consecutive brothers. After each one died, she married the next and then she died. And so they asked to whom will she be united forever in one flesh since she had been married to all seven. They thought it was a checkmate type of question that if she had been one flesh with all and um she would remain one flesh with all to whom could she be divided or joined in the afterlife? Jesus said in response, “You know neither the scriptures nor the power of God.” And he went back to Moses in the burning bush. God said to Moses that day, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.” By this point at Moses’ time, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were long dead. And God was saying, “I am not I was, but I am their God.” Which implies that they were very, very much alive in him. Jesus wants us to believe in the power of his resurrection. This is what gives the martyrs such great courage. The martyrs are the ones that recognize if crucifixion couldn’t even keep Jesus in the tomb, why do we need to be so afraid of death? And so they were able to give great witness to Jesus. there in um Uganda the big question from the maniacal king was let the people who pray go over to this side and the people who don’t pray on this side the real characteristic of Christians were people who pray people who realize God’s alive and is listening to us just like you listen to me from this tabernacle when I was a four-year-old boy today we pray for the church in Uganda we pray for all missionaries continuing to spread the faith there. We pray for this church now about 150 years old, which is sending missionaries across the globe, including to the United States, that we might all have total trust in God who was risen from the dead, Jesus who is the resurrection of the life, and choose him even should we be threatened, just like the North America, just like the Ugandan martyrs show us today. God bless you all.
The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based on:
Gospel
Some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection,
came to Jesus and put this question to him, saying,
“Teacher, Moses wrote for us,
If someone’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no child,
his brother must take the wife
and raise up descendants for his brother.
Now there were seven brothers.
The first married a woman and died, leaving no descendants.
So the second brother married her and died, leaving no descendants,
and the third likewise.
And the seven left no descendants.
Last of all the woman also died.
At the resurrection when they arise whose wife will she be?
For all seven had been married to her.”
Jesus said to them, “Are you not misled
because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God?
When they rise from the dead,
they neither marry nor are given in marriage,
but they are like the angels in heaven.
As for the dead being raised,
have you not read in the Book of Moses,
in the passage about the bush, how God told him,
I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob?
He is not God of the dead but of the living.
You are greatly misled.”