Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for September 23, 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 23rd, the feast of St. Pio of Pietrelcina. Today in the gospel, Jesus is preaching in a home, crowded. And then people say, “Your mother and your brothers are outside wanting to see you.” And Jesus uses those words as a teaching opportunity. Says, “My mother and my brothers and my sisters are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”
Jesus wasn’t dismissing his mom and his cousins. That word brothers in the original language is the word for relatives. And there’s no distinction between brothers and sisters or cousins. And so Jesus had plenty of cousins, but he didn’t have actual brothers and sisters. St. Jerome took up these words in the 4th century and showed definitively that if Jesus did have any siblings, they would have been the ones under Jewish law to receive Mary when Jesus was dying, not St. John. But back to the story, Jesus wanted to say that what distinguished his mother was the fact that she was one who heard the word of God and observed it.
She was one who heard that word of God so deeply that that word took on her flesh in her own womb and dwelt among us. She was one who wanted her whole life to develop “secundum verbum tuum,” as we pray in the Angeles, according to your word as she said to the angel. And so when we look at this gospel we see first an interpretation of Mary’s whole life. Second we see what we’re supposed to be doing.
Jesus came to found a family and he wants us to be his brothers and sisters and that doesn’t happen merely by our baptism. That starts the whole process. But Jesus wants us morally to be his brothers and sisters by our hearing the word of God and observing it. Just like he told us on Saturday that we’re supposed to hear that word on good soil and told us yesterday that that word is supposed to be like a light that we take care to hear so that we can grow even richer.
It’s likewise what missionaries do that they themselves hear the word of God and not just observe it, live it, make their lives commentaries of it, but go to the ends of the world to allow others to become Jesus’ brothers and sisters too by hearing the word of God and doing it. Someone who lived by these words is the great saint we celebrate today. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina was one who heard the Lord speaking to him very young and left everything in order to become a Capuchin. He was so conformed to the word of God that he eventually would bear the Lord’s own wounds. He was so attuned to listening to the Lord that he was able to hear the Lord’s voice in the confessional and really become a great instrument of conversion for so many. We ask St. Pio’s intercession today for all missionaries and for all Christians that we might truly become Jesus’ brothers and sisters and even mother by conceiving within us the word of God and letting it grow such that we become 13 months pregnant and can’t keep that word in.
God bless you.
The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based on:
Gospel
The mother of Jesus and his brothers came to him
but were unable to join him because of the crowd.
He was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside
and they wish to see you.”
He said to them in reply, “My mother and my brothers
are those who hear the word of God and act on it.”