Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for November 9, 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 Sunday, November 9th, the feast of the dedication of the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran in the Pope’s Cathedral. And I’m coming to you from the largest church in North America, the Colosseum on the grounds of the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, which it fits 10,000 people. And it’s in structures like this that we remember the church and we remember how God wants to pack all our churches. The feast of St. John and the Lateran is the celebration ultimately of the teaching authority of the Holy Father. The Lateran is the Pope’s Cathedral. It’s where his cheer is, which is a sign of his teaching authority. Jesus sat down to teach the crowds in the sermon on the mount. We still have shear men uh who show authority and just like a judge today has a bench and a gavel. So teachers in the ancient world had a cheer. They would sit and teach as the students took notes standing. And so the celebration of the Lateran is the celebration of the papacy and particularly the task that the papacy has received to teach all nations. But to celebrate a church like this one or like the Lateran is to remember that we are ultimately supposed to be a church not just collectively as we are. You are God’s temple. St. Paul said to the Christians in Corinthians using the plural you but that each of us is supposed to be a dwelling place of God. God father, son, and holy spirit wants to come down and dwell inside of us. And that’s what happens at Baptism. That’s what is intensified in a particular way when Jesus in his body, blood, soul, and divinity comes to dwell within us in Holy Communion. In the gospel today, we learn from Jesus how we’re supposed to be purified in order to be able to receive him. It’s the passage of the cleansing of the temple of Jerusalem where Jesus formed a whip and drove out those who were selling animals and overturned the money changers tables saying to all of them, “Stop making my father’s house a den of thieves.” The money changers were exchanging exorbitant interest rates which didn’t matter much for the rich, but of course was ripping off the poor of what they needed for survival. And likewise, the chief priests had made the rule that in order to sacrifice an animal, it had to be unblemished. And so you really had a difficulty walking with an animal for 40, 60, or 100 miles. You’d have to buy one there in the temple area. And it was a sellers market, and they could charge whatever exorbitant rates they wanted. Jesus wants to cleanse us through the sacrament of confession, through baptism, etc. Just like he changed that temple so that we can be a fitting dwelling place for him. The Archbasilica of St. John Lateran has been destroyed four times by earthquakes and fires and sackings, but it’s been rebuilt and therefore is a sign of how we’re supposed to be rebuilt with every time that we receive the sacrament of confession that Jesus himself mercifully drives us out so that our house might not be seeking money or seeking the things of this world, but ultimately might be a place of prayer, a place in which we have true communion with God through the time we make for him in prayer, a place to worship him when we receive him in the sacraments, a launching pad for our own charity. As together with God, we go out into the world and try to transform it. This is what missionaries do all throughout the world. They try to bring people into the temple of God so that God can make them his dwelling place in this world and take them to his eternal dwelling place in heaven. On this dedication of St. John Lateran Archbasilica. We pray for our holy father and we pray for the church throughout the world that we might be that holy temple and help people to remember who
The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based on:
Gospel
Since the Passover of the Jews was near,
Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves,
as well as the money-changers seated there.
He made a whip out of cords
and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen,
and spilled the coins of the money-changers
and overturned their tables,
and to those who sold doves he said,
“Take these out of here,
and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”
His disciples recalled the words of Scripture,
Zeal for your house will consume me.
At this the Jews answered and said to him,
“What sign can you show us for doing this?”
Jesus answered and said to them,
“Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”
The Jews said,
“This temple has been under construction for forty-six years,
and you will raise it up in three days?”
But he was speaking about the temple of his Body.
Therefore, when he was raised from the dead,
his disciples remembered that he had said this,
and they came to believe the Scripture
and the word Jesus had spoken.