Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for October 20, 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 a Manhattan rooftop on Monday, October 20th. Today, Jesus gives us some very strong words in the gospel about our relationship to money. He reminds us that life doesn’t consist in abundance of possessions and he encourage uses encourages us to become rich in what really matters in what matters to God. The setting is somebody cries out from the crowd saying, “Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.” But Jesus hadn’t come down from heaven to earth to be a judge settling inheritance disputes. He’d come to do something far more important. He had come to make us truly rich in what matters. And so he gave a parable to all those who were listening. He said, “There was a rich man who had a bountiful harvest. And rather than wanting to shear what he had reaped, he said, “Where am I going to put my harvest? My grain bins aren’t big enough.” So he tore down those that he had and built bigger ones to store his harvest. Never knowing that that very night he would die and it wouldn’t be able to take any of that stuff with him. And Jesus warns, he says, “Thus will it be with those who try to store up treasure for themselves on earth without becoming rich in what matters to God.” So how do we become rich in what matters to God? How do we not copy that fool, but rather copy Jesus? The way is for us to recognize that everything we have, all the material possessions we have are ultimately to love. They’re to spread Christ’s kingdom. Now, the ordinary way people do that is spending on those they love. We’re not talking about super gifts. When dads and moms sacrifice their hard-earned earnings to support their family, they are loving their family through those material resources. When we pay for scholarships so that inner city kids can have the opportunity to get a really good education, that’s what we’re doing. When we give to the poor directly or we give to those groups that are helping the poor like the Catholic Church and all of our Catholic social service ministries, we are becoming rich in what matters to God. And when we give to the missions to spread the faith, we are indeed becoming rich in what lastingly matters. A couple weeks ago, Pope Leo gave us a beautiful apostolic exhortation on poverty. And in it, he urged us to care for the poor in whatever disguise they come. But he said, “The greatest poverty of all is spiritual poverty.” He was citing St. trees of Kolkata who said sometimes those who are rich are spiritually poor but the greatest spiritual poverty is not knowing Jesus and when we support the missions like the church was doing yesterday on world mission Sunday we are equipping missionaries with the capacity to be able to take true wealth to others that friendship with the Lord of all and so today as we hear Jesus’ words if we haven’t given to world mission Sunday yesterday I just urge you, please give generously to the support of the church’s charity toward those in missionary territories where they’re too poor, too young in faith, or too persecuted to be able to be self- sustaining. Recognize that doing so is not building a useless grain bin, but storing up for yourselves and helping others to become rich in what truly matters. God bless you.
The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based on:
Gospel
Someone in the crowd said to Jesus,
“Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.”
He replied to him,
“Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?”
Then he said to the crowd,
“Take care to guard against all greed,
for though one may be rich,
one’s life does not consist of possessions.”
Then he told them a parable.
“There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest.
He asked himself, ‘What shall I do,
for I do not have space to store my harvest?’
And he said, ‘This is what I shall do:
I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones.
There I shall store all my grain and other goods
and I shall say to myself, “Now as for you,
you have so many good things stored up for many years,
rest, eat, drink, be merry!”‘
But God said to him,
‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you;
and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’
Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself
but is not rich in what matters to God.”