Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for October 13, 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, coming to you from our chapel in Manhattan. It’s October 13, six days from World Mission Sunday. And today in the gospel, Jesus gives us a very powerful set of words with regard to how he wishes for us to be responding to him. It’s not enough for us just to ask. He wants us to do. He said, “This generation is an evil generation because it seeks a sign.” What was happening at his time is people were constantly looking for indications that he was the Messiah. And Jesus was already giving multiple indications. He was almost fulfilling the entire hit list of what Isaiah had prophesied the Messiah would do. All the miracles that Isaiah had prophesied Jesus doing one by one. But people still didn’t want to accept him. He said this generation still seeks a sign. It’s not acting. And no sign will be given it. He says except the sign of Jonah. sign of Jonah was a sign of Jesus’ own death and resurrection. That just as Jonah spent three days in the belly of the whale before he was expunged safe and sound to land, so Jesus would spend three days in the belly of the earth before he would rise in the resurrection. That’s the first aspect of the sign of Jonah. The second and even more fundamental is that everything Jonah said and did was meant to be a sign of conversion. And when Jonah started preaching to the pagan Ninevites, modern-day Iraq, he said 40 days and Nineveh will be destroyed. And he didn’t have to say 39 days. As soon as he started to preach it, everybody converted. And then Jesus said there’s a greater than Jonah here. He’s greater, way greater than Jonah. He created Jonah. But if people converted in a pagan town because of the work of Jonah, shouldn’t be shouldn’t Jesus’s fellow Jews, shouldn’t Christians be converting on the spot because of Jesus who is so much greater? Then he gave a second image. The Queen of Sheba traveled 1660 miles across the desert each way in order just to listen to the wisdom of Solomon. Solomon’s wisdom is great. It was famous during the time. You name it. But there’s a far greater than Solomon here. Jesus says, namely himself who was wisdom incarnate. How seriously do we take Jesus’ words of conversion? How seriously and grateful are we are for his wisdom? The missionaries are the ones who take that message of mercy and the conversion that’s possible as well as the word and the wisdom of God out to the ends of the earth because they grasp Jesus that greater one has come into the world and they want everyone to be able to receive the same graces from God that they first have received. That’s what all the apostles on the wall behind me received and that’s what spurned their mission. That’s what helps Catholics in every age. As we get ready for World Mission Sunday, let us pray for all those missionaries that they might themselves be sowed with a converted and holy life and with God’s wisdom that they might make that wisdom so attractive that everyone everywhere will come to want to meet that greater than Jonah and greater than Solomon. God bless you.
The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based on:
Gospel
While still more people gathered in the crowd, Jesus said to them,
“This generation is an evil generation;
it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it,
except the sign of Jonah.
Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites,
so will the Son of Man be to this generation.
At the judgment
the queen of the south will rise with the men of this generation
and she will condemn them,
because she came from the ends of the earth
to hear the wisdom of Solomon,
and there is something greater than Solomon here.
At the judgment the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation
and condemn it,
because at the preaching of Jonah they repented,
and there is something greater than Jonah here.”