Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection September 9, 2025
Here is the video of today’s reflection.
The YouTube generated transcript for today’s reflection is:
I’m Monsignor Roger Landry on the beautiful grounds of St. Raphael Parish in St. Petersburg where I stay when I’m at our office in St. Petersburg. And today on September 9th, the feast of St. Peter Claver, the great apostle to the slaves, we have an extraordinary gospel. It’s one of the most important events in human history. Jesus spent an all-nighter praying, praying to the father, asking for his help. And then when daybreak came, he descended a mountain, and he brought all his disciples together and from his disciples he chose 12 whom he named apostles.
Disciple means student. Apostle means one who is sent out. And so, he called Peter, Andrew, James, John, Thomas, James, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Simon, Jude, and Judas Iscariot to be those that he would form intimately for three years. He would train to bring his gospel to others and then send them on out. And after he had called them, everybody was bringing their sick to him. And Jesus was touching them with healing power. The disciples-turned-apostles were eventually going to be given that same authority to bring the touch of Jesus to a world that very much needs it.
Each of us who has been called a disciple by the Lord, to be his follower, is likewise summoned by the Lord by name, to be a missionary disciple, to be an apostle, to take the treasure of our faith to others. Today, the church celebrates the feast of St. Peter Claver, who was a great teacher in Spain, but eventually he became the apostle to the slaves in Cartagena, Colombia. He crisscrossed the harbors, crisscrossed the docks where the poor almost dead from transatlantic journeys were there in need of everything. He learned their dialects. He bathed them. He gave them some perfume to get past the terrible smells that they had been used to. He loved them in every way he could. And he baptized them by the tens of thousands because they recognized after the difficulties of slavery that someone actually was treating them with dignity. Someone was treating them as God desires and they deserved. Today on the feast of St. Peter Claver, we remember all those in a particular way who are victims of human trafficking today, a form of awful modern slavery. And we ask God for the grace to be apostles to them so that we might be able to take them the same healing touch Jesus gave at the seashore of Galilee and Peter Claver gave on the shores of Colombia. God bless you.
The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based was:
Gospel
Jesus departed to the mountain to pray,
and he spent the night in prayer to God.
When day came, he called his disciples to himself,
and from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named Apostles:
Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew,
James, John, Philip, Bartholomew,
Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus,
Simon who was called a Zealot,
and Judas the son of James,
and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.
And he came down with them and stood on a stretch of level ground.
A great crowd of his disciples and a large number of the people
from all Judea and Jerusalem
and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon
came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases;
and even those who were tormented by unclean spirits were cured.
Everyone in the crowd sought to touch him
because power came forth from him and healed them all.