Daily Reflection for the Pontifical Mission Societies, May, 17, 2026

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for May 17, 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 of America. It’s Sunday, May 17th, which in some parts of the country is the 7th Sunday of Easter. In other parts of the country, it’s the Ascension of the Lord, and I’ll try to incorporate both feasts into this reflection. I’m before the Cathedral of St. Mary the Immaculate Conception in Peoria, where soon-to-be Blessed Fulton J. Sheen served Mass, made his first communion, was confirmed, was ordained a deacon and a priest. It’s a very sacred spot, which will become even more well known after his beatification this September 24th. Let’s begin with the Ascension of the Lord. Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father. He returned to where he was going to make a place for us. He returned to where he ultimately belongs, right there, as part of the Godhead, but he’s brought our human nature mysteriously back with him. How extraordinary that is. And um as he was ascending, St. Luke tells us, his hands were raised in blessing upon us. And the verb there is a continuous past, meaning Jesus was raised in a constant act of blessing. He’s constantly blessing us. And one of the ways that he blesses us is he gives us his own mission. As he was ascending, he gave us the Great Commission. Go and proclaim the gospel to all nations, baptizing, teaching them to observe, not just know, what I’ve commanded you, and then that I’m always with you until the end of time. That incredible blessing that we would continue his mission, that he loved us enough and he trusted us enough that together with the Holy Spirit, he was confident we wouldn’t blow it. In today’s gospel for the 7th Sunday of Easter, we see what Jesus was doing during the celebration of the first Mass 43 days earlier in the upper room, in which he was asking the Father to glorify him, to glorify him with the glory he had before the foundation of the world. And that glory would be to give us the gift of eternal life. And then he defined what that life was. He said, “This is eternal life that they may know you, the one true God, and Jesus whom you sent.” That would be the assistance that the Holy Spirit would give to all of us in the church as we tried to spread our faith so that ultimately we could come to know not just about the Lord, but to know the Lord the way we know a friend. With that type of extraordinary intimacy. That’s what the Lord wants. And at the very end of this passage, he says, “I am leaving them in the world and I am coming to you.” That links the 7th Sunday of Easter to the solemnity of Ascension. Jesus was ascending to the Father, but he was leaving us in the world not to be of the world, but to act in the world together with the Holy Spirit whom we he would send so that we would be able to proclaim the gospel to the ends of the earth and so that all might come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved. Today on May 17th as we celebrate both of these feast days, we thank the Lord for the gift of this great commission, for the gift of the Holy Spirit, for the gift of the Lord’s glory. And we ask that through our deeds, people seeing them might glorify our Father in heaven. This is what the church is. This is what missionaries carry out. This is what Fulton Sheen tried to live. What a great gift of our Catholic faith.

The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based on: