Daily Reflection for the Pontifical Mission Societies, May 18, 2026

The YouTube generated transcript for today’s reflection is:

I’m Monsignor Roger Landry, national director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the US. Today is Monday, May 18th. I’m standing on what used to be the parish of St. Patrick in Peoria, Illinois, where the soon-to-be Blessed Fulton J. Sheen served as a parish priest for 13 months in 1925 and 1926 before he was sent to teach at the Catholic University of America. This is a place in which we are able to ponder the transmission of the faith. Sometimes parishes exist, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they even have future blesseds and saints as their priests, but people move, things shift in the church. And so, St. Patrick’s here in Peoria is no more, but the church continues. The church that Fulton J. Sheen worked so hard to build up, the church that you and I have a mission to continue to build up. In today’s gospel, the disciples of Jesus during the Last Supper, after having him having heard him talk about the Holy Spirit, after having heard him say, “The Father loves you and ask him for whatever you want and he’ll give it not just because I’m interceding for you, he’ll give it because the Father himself loves you.” They say, “Now you’re finally speaking plainly. Now we believe that you have truly come from God.” And Jesus says, “Do you believe now?” And adds, “The hour is coming and is soon here when each of you will betray me and each of you will be scampering to your own home.” He said that he told them so that they might have confidence in him. He said, “Don’t worry, the Father himself is with me. But I am saying this to you so that when it happens, you may have confidence in me.” He didn’t want them to be so dejected after the betrayal. He was telling them they were going to betray him, but that he was always going to have the Father’s presence and even in the midst of the lowliness of their own betrayal, even in the midst of that sadness, they were still supposed to have hope. Many parishioners in the United States have seen their parishes go. If the parishes are still technically on the books, a lot of the times they’re more abundant. They don’t have a lot of life in them. Sometimes we can be very sad. But we shouldn’t remain there because Jesus has in fact promised that he will be with us until the end of time. A parish may come or go, a diocese may come or go, even a whole country’s Christians may come or can go. But Jesus is going to remain with us. Jesus is going to continue to call people to him. And it’s the faithful who are ultimately going to be standing with him. And so this is a great sign. Someday there will be something else here, but somewhere else the vitality of the church is now continuing. Missionaries are those who plant new churches across the globe. They try to put themselves out of business. They’ll arrive in a place and then they’ll build up the church for a generation or two or four. But then once that church is thriving, once it has an indigenous clergy, once it’s self-supporting, they move on to other places. And it’s to those who have received the gift of faith that we can’t take it for granted. We can’t live on the sacrifices of yesterday. We’ve got to work as hard as the first generation apostles have in order to continue the church growing in that direction until 100 out of 100 out of 8.1 out of 8.1 billion remain faithful to the Lord. We are now in day five of the Decenary of the Holy Spirit in which we pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit for new Pentecost as we will mark this upcoming Sunday. Let’s continue to ask God the Holy Spirit to inspire us to take up our role in the transmission of the faith just like Fulton J. Sheen did here in Peoria, just like missionaries do to the ends of the earth. God bless you.

The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based on:

Gospel