Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for November 28, 2025
Here is the video of today’s reflection.
I’m Monsignor Roger Landry, national director of the Pontifical Mission Societies. Coming to you from the beautiful grounds of the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs in Auriesville, New York. Over me, you can see the Mohawk Valley and the Mohawk River. Today, November 28th, is the feast of St. Catherine Laboure. Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, whose feast was yesterday, Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal appeared to St. Catherine in 1830 and said that she wanted to have a medal struck. And on that medal, you’d be able to see our lady interceding for graces with some brilliant rings for graces received and some dull rings for graces she had obtained from her son that we didn’t receive. And she asked that this medal have the words on it, oh Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us whoever to thee, to help us run back literally have recourse to Mary, asking for those graces that she goes ahead of us to ask for. Just like she asked Jesus for the miracle in the wedding feast of Cana before it seemed even the couple knew that they had a catastrophe on their hands. Mary’s constantly praying for us and she prays likewise in November as we ponder the last things death judgment heaven and hell on which we have been contemplating this month. Today’s gospel Jesus helps us to get ready for those things by an image of a fig tree. He says when we see the leaves of the fig tree begin to bloom we know that summer’s near. Anybody who grows figs knows that. And he says we should be similar that when we see the things that he was announcing to us yesterday, earthquakes, famines, plagues, various other natural disasters, betrayals even by family members, various things happening in the heavens, that we should know he is near. And because we see those things almost every day if we’re paying attention in the news, that means we should be ready every day because he is near. The kingdom of heaven is at hand because the king is with us. God with us is still very much with us in the sacraments in others in the moral life in the church. But at the very end of today’s passage, he mentions one way that we always have to take seriously. He says, “Heaven and earth are going to pass away as we know it. Everything we see is going to pass away except one thing.” He says, “My words will never pass away.” At the end of the sermon on the mount, Jesus had said that the wise person is one who hears his word and builds his whole life on it like somebody who builds his house on a rock. We need to recognize that Jesus has the words of eternal life. They will never pass away. And so with faith, we’re called not just to hear those words, not just to believe those words, but to live those words. Mary is precisely the one who let her whole life develop according to the Lord’s word. To see her is to see a commentary to see how the word could become flesh as Jesus took flesh in her life and as he seeks to in your life and mine. Missionaries are the ones who crisscross the world proclaiming the word of God. The word that will endure forever. the word of eternal life that will bring us if we in flesh it to Jesus’s presence with St. Catherine Laboure with Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal and all the saints. God bless you.
Jesus told his disciples a parable.
“Consider the fig tree and all the other trees.
When their buds burst open,
you see for yourselves and know that summer is now near;
in the same way, when you see these things happening,
know that the Kingdom of God is near.
Amen, I say to you, this generation will not pass away
until all these things have taken place.
Heaven and earth will pass away,
but my words will not pass away.”