Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
September 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. It’s September 13th, the feast of St. John Chrysostom and I’m on the beautiful grounds of St. Rafael Parish in St. Petersburg, Florida. In the gospel today, Jesus wraps up the sermon on the plain with two images about how we’re supposed to respond to everything he says. The first is by bearing fruit. He says a good tree doesn’t bear rotten fruit, nor a rotten tree good fruit, and that you’d know the tree by its fruit. He doesn’t want us so much focusing on the fruit, but on the tree. In the sermon that he gave during the last supper in John 15, he talked about the vine and the branches. And he said if we’re like branches on him, the vine, we will bear fruit. But without him, we can bear no fruit. The most important thing is to be that tree that’s ultimately united to Jesus. And when Jesus gives us his teaching, when he gives us his word, he wants it to become part of us. When we interiorize it in that way, we will bear good fruit just like any good tree.
The second image is of building a house. He says he wants us to build the house on the rock of his word so that whatever storms come, we will remain standing. The fools, he says, are those who hear his word but don’t seek to construct their life on it. Today, the church celebrates St. John Chrysostom, an extraordinary disciple from Syria who became the patriarch of Constantinople and the greatest preacher in the history of the Church. He sought always to unite his entire life through fasting and through prayer to Jesus. And because of that unity with all the talents God had given him, he was able to preach in such a way that he
lit the entire empire on fire. He was one who had constructed his entire house on the rock. He was exiled five times from Constantinople because of his challenging preaching. And once he said, “Am I afraid when you exile me? No, because the earth is the Lord’s in its fullness and I have built my house on the rock, no matter how ferocious the storms and the waves.” He teaches us how to trust in the Lord in a similar way.
Today we pray in a particular way for missionaries that they might, like John Chrysostom, be powerful preachers, bringing the fire of the Lord’s love to the ends of the earth especially to the 1,124 missionary dioceses across the globe. And we pray in a special way that their work might be fruitful in helping people to nest themselves in Jesus the vine, becoming good trees bearing extraordinary fruit that lasts and building their entire existence, their lives, their families, their cultures on Christ the rock. God bless you.
The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based on:
Gospel
Jesus said to his disciples:
“A good tree does not bear rotten fruit,
nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit.
For every tree is known by its own fruit.
For people do not pick figs from thornbushes,
nor do they gather grapes from brambles.
A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good,
but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil;
for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.
“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ but not do what I command?
I will show you what someone is like who comes to me,
listens to my words, and acts on them.
That one is like a man building a house,
who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock;
when the flood came, the river burst against that house
but could not shake it because it had been well built.
But the one who listens and does not act
is like a person who built a house on the ground
without a foundation.
When the river burst against it,
it collapsed at once and was completely destroyed.”