Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for November 4, 2025
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 November 4th, the feast of the great St. Charles Borromeo and I’m coming to you from the shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs in Auriesville, New York. In this month of November, we’re pondering the four last things, death, judgment, heaven, and hell. And Jesus in today’s gospel shows us how to choose heaven right now. So that when death and judgment comes, we will pass to his eternal right rather than to his eternal left of definitive self-alienation from him. He says that heaven can be compared to a banquet. And when he sent out the people to let them know that the banquet is ready and to come to the banquet, he found some excuse makers. One person said, “I just bought some new oxen and I’ve got to go try them out. consider me excused. The second made a similar excuse that I have to go to my farm and to inspect my property, putting work, for example, ahead of God. The third put marriage. I’ve just gotten married and so I can’t come as if human love is greater than the love we’re supposed to receive and reciprocate from God himself. And so the one who was throwing the banquet here on earth and forever sends out his servants and says, “Then invite the poor, the lame, the crippled, the blind.” We were talking about them yesterday in the gospel, the people that the world discards. Invite them. And so the servants went out and they invited them and then they came. And the servant said, “There’s still more room.” And then he says, “Go out into the hedge. Go out everywhere and make people come to the feast. do whatever you can to invite them. This is the work of missionaries so that he can throw that banquet. We’re all called to see, do we make excuses when it comes to our relationship with God? Are we prioritizing other things over prayer, over the sacraments, over charity? Do we think we have to do these other things, but the things of God can wait? And then do we have that zeal to be the true servant of the Lord? Going out and persuading people to respond to his invitation. This is what the great missionaries do. They crisscross the globe to allow people to know that they have been invited to the banquet of God here on earth. That’s what the sacrament of the mass is. and that they’ve been invited by the same Lord to the eternal nuptial banquet of extraordinary happiness praying and working and even in a sense making people choose God. Someone who did that in his lifetime was St. Charles Borromeo. Even though he was a member of the Medici family and had wealth and was going to inherit everything, he prioritized the things of God. He became a cardinal at the shockingly young age of 22 as more or less a favor from his uncle who was the pope. But he wasn’t going to rest there. He was going to really seek holiness and he did. He was the chief figure to bring the council of Trent reforming the church to its conclusion. And then when he eventually was able to arrive as the archbishop of Milan, the largest diocese in the world at the time, he totally transformed it in holiness, suffering a great deal from it and working so hard that he died at the tender age of 46 years old. We pray through his intercession today for Pope Leo. We pray for missionaries. We pray for us that we might first respond to God’s invitation, the incredible, greatest invitation we’ll ever receive in life. and that we like the servants in the gospel may be the Lord’s servants and go out and invite others to that same earthly and eternal me feast. God bless you.
The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based on
Gospel
One of those at table with Jesus said to him,
“Blessed is the one who will dine in the Kingdom of God.”
He replied to him,
“A man gave a great dinner to which he invited many.
When the time for the dinner came,
he dispatched his servant to say to those invited,
‘Come, everything is now ready.’
But one by one, they all began to excuse themselves.
The first said to him,
‘I have purchased a field and must go to examine it;
I ask you, consider me excused.’
And another said, ‘I have purchased five yoke of oxen
and am on my way to evaluate them;
I ask you, consider me excused.’
And another said, ‘I have just married a woman,
and therefore I cannot come.’
The servant went and reported this to his master.
Then the master of the house in a rage commanded his servant,
‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town
and bring in here the poor and the crippled, the blind and the lame.’
The servant reported, ‘Sir, your orders have been carried out
and still there is room.’
The master then ordered the servant,
‘Go out to the highways and hedgerows
and make people come in that my home may be filled.
For, I tell you, none of those men who were invited will taste my dinner.