Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection October 31, 2025
Here is the video of today’s reflection.
The Youtube generated transcript for today’s reflection is:
I am Monsignor Roger Landry, national director of the Pontifical Mission Societies, coming to you from a Manhattan rooftop at dawn. It’s All Hallow’s Eve, October 31st. And in today’s gospel, we see one of the things that’s necessary for us to become a saint as we prepare for All Saints Day tomorrow. Jesus goes to the home of a leading Pharisee whose name isn’t given to us. There they kind of set Jesus up. They bring in a man suffering from dropsy, what we call today edema. He’s filled with fluids and they’re observing him carefully. They want to see what he can do. It was a trap. And so Jesus sensing the trap asked the question, is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath? Is it offensive or pleasing to God that we would love on the Lord’s day? that we would do something super important for somebody who was in enormous pain, couldn’t work, was coming hoping to receive some type of a miracle. Is it possible to do an act like that? And of course, the people who had been setting him up said nothing out of their hypocrisy. And so then Jesus said, “Which one of you, if his son or even his ox were to fall into a cistern on the Sabbath, wouldn’t immediately rescue him? Why wouldn’t we care for the man suffering from dropsy in other words? And Jesus was outing the very fact that they didn’t care whether this man was suffering. He was just an instrument in their game to try to trap Jesus. And so Jesus cured the man healed with dropsy because his love for this man and for his father on the Lord’s day was that great. What lessons do we derive from it about sanctity for which we’re preparing by our baptism, but also by All Saints Day that we do tomorrow? It’s that we’ve really got to have a care for others. We’ve got to recognize that the purpose of everything God has given to us is to love him and to love others. The whole purpose of the Sabbath was not not to do work. The purpose of the Sabbath was to love and so that God would be able to hit the reset button in our relationship with him and our relationship with others. This is what Jesus got. This is what Jesus was teaching. This is ultimately why Jesus died because they plotted to kill him precisely because of what they considered his violations of the Sabbath. Missionaries are seeking sanctity in this way. They care enough about all those who are filled with the fluids of this world that they leave home. They kiss their mom and their dad and their brothers and their sisters and their ex-girlfriends or boyfriends goodbye and off they go. Religious men, religious women, lay people, priests in order to be able to bring Christ’s healing to this world to make every day a Lord’s day to do good not just on the Sabbath but on each of the days of the week. Today we pray for the missionaries and we ask for the grace like Jesus to have the courage to do what’s right any day of the week despite the fact that we will encounter some opposition. God bless you.
The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based on:
Gospel
On a sabbath Jesus went to dine
at the home of one of the leading Pharisees,
and the people there were observing him carefully.
In front of him there was a man suffering from dropsy.
Jesus spoke to the scholars of the law and Pharisees in reply, asking,
“Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath or not?”
But they kept silent; so he took the man and,
after he had healed him, dismissed him.
Then he said to them
“Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern,
would not immediately pull him out on the sabbath day?”
But they were unable to answer his question.