Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for November 30, 2025
Here is the video of today’s reflection.
Happy new year everyone. I’m Monsignor Roger Landry, national director of the Pontifical Mission Societies. I’m looking over the Missouri River from the campus of the great Augustine Institute in St. Louis. Today we celebrate the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the church’s new liturgical year. Liturgical year is not supposed to be a liturgical cycle in which we just merely retrace the steps of last year and the year before, the year before that. It’s meant to be a liturgical spiral in which we’re able to be brought further and further to the realities of Jesus coming for us each year to learn from the successes and the mistakes, the graces and the sins of last year so that this new liturgical year can build grace upon grace as we get closer to that time in which Jesus comes for us and the the Lord Jesus comes at the end of the world for the entire church. That’s what today’s gospel is about. In the first Sunday of Advent, Jesus says, “Stay awake.” He says that at the times of Noah, nobody knew that the flood was coming. He said, “So will it be when Jesus himself comes.” He says, “Two guys are going to be working out in the field, only one will be taken because only one will be ready. Two will be grinding meal in a mill, but only one will be taken because one will be totally unprepared and the other be ready.” The great lesson is to be ready not as a thing of alertness like someone who’s trying to guard a border from a terrorist, but to be ready with eagerness that we’re longing for the Lord’s coming. We’re saying, “Come, Lord Jesus.” That’s what the season of Advent is most meant to help us to do. In Advent, there is a three-fold coming of Jesus and a three-fold eager going to approach him. First, it’s Jesus coming in time and history. We say in Bethlehem, taking on our humanity and entering the human race. The second is when Jesus comes to us in the here and now in prayer and the sacraments like the Holy Eucharist, we run out to meet him with eagerness there. And the third and the most important part at the beginning of Advent is when Jesus comes at the end of time to judge living in the dead or the end of our life, whichever comes first. That we’re supposed to approach with eagerness as well. We say come Lord Jesus in each of these three ways so that as we run out to meet him and encounter him we’re transformed to continue our life journey with him. This is ultimately the work of missions. It’s a response to the prayer explicitly made or sometimes implicitly made by so many all across the world who want God in their life who want what Jesus created them for what he made their hearts to desire. They missionaries go to bring that gift to everyone everywhere. And so at the beginning of this Advent season, let’s ask ourselves, do we really mean the words come Lord Jesus? Do we want him to come to us and go out to meet him in the historical reality of his presence and the way he changed the world? Do we want to go out and meet him in prayer in the sacraments? And do we and do we want to be ready to greet him when he comes at the end of time? And do we want to make that possible for everyone? This is the Advent season. Happy New Year. May this year be a year of the Lord and a true year of mission.
The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based on:
Gospel
Jesus said to his disciples:
“As it was in the days of Noah,
so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.
In those days before the flood,
they were eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage,
up to the day that Noah entered the ark.
They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away.
So will it be also at the coming of the Son of Man.
Two men will be out in the field;
one will be taken, and one will be left.
Two women will be grinding at the mill;
one will be taken, and one will be left.
Therefore, stay awake!
For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.
Be sure of this: if the master of the house
had known the hour of night when the thief was coming,
he would have stayed awake
and not let his house be broken into.
So too, you also must be prepared,
for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.”