Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for September 2, 2025
Here is the video of today’s reflection.
I am Monsignor Roger Landry, national director of the Pontifical Mission Societies. It’s September 2nd. In today’s gospel, Jesus goes to the synagogue in Capernaum and he preaches with an authority that astonishes and amazes. He spoke like nobody had ever spoken rather than the rabbis who used to cite sacred scripture and other rabbis. He used his own eye. He spoke with uh with the authority that had created the world. And to illustrate that authority, at the very end of that gospel, he cured a man who had been possessed. And everybody was amazed and said, “Who is this that he commands even demons and they obey him?”
Behind me here in the Cathedral of Monreale in um in Sicily, the world’s most beautiful church in my opinion, you’ve got an image of Jesus the bento, the ruler of all. He came into the world and took our humanity with with his authority so that he could essentially drive the demon out of our lives. That demon who had tripped us up at the beginning in Genesis was going to be defeated by Jesus’ work.
Today in a special way we pray for all missionaries who just like Jesus went to that synagogue in Capernaum go to 1124 missionary territories across the globe trying to share Jesus’s saving word with Jesus’s saving authority and Jesus’ power in the sacraments that are made available all over. We pray for the missionaries that they themselves might continue the work of the bento so that one day in all his glory we may see him. God bless you.
The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based was:
Gospel
Jesus went down to Capernaum, a town of Galilee.
He taught them on the sabbath,
and they were astonished at his teaching
because he spoke with authority.
In the synagogue there was a man with the spirit of an unclean demon,
and he cried out in a loud voice,
“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?
Have you come to destroy us?
I know who you are–the Holy One of God!”
Jesus rebuked him and said, “Be quiet! Come out of him!”
Then the demon threw the man down in front of them
and came out of him without doing him any harm.
They were all amazed and said to one another,
“What is there about his word?
For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits,
and they come out.”
And news of him spread everywhere in the surrounding region.