Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Augustine Institute, Florissant, Missouri
St. Louis Collaborator Summit for the PAC 27 Marian Conference
September 4, 2026
To listen to an audio recording of this second part of a three-part keynote, please click below:
The text that guided the talk was:
- The second characteristic that Pope Francis mentioned in 2013 that is meant to characterize confraternities, associations and in fact every faithful disciple is an ecclesial spirit.
- The very word confraternity points toward brotherhood and sisterhood. That familial sense is not just supposed to characterize their relationship with other members of the confraternity or association, but meant is likewise supposed to define the way they approach all of their brothers and sisters by baptism. Christ came from heaven to earth not just to save us as individuals and allow us to continue to live as isolated monads. He came to found a family full of those who do the will of God, who hear God’s word and put it into practice. Among the various consequences of baptism is that we are made members of Christ’s own mystical body the Church, organically interrelated to all of our brothers and sisters. That baptismal reality is meant to be consciously lived. Pope Francis in 2023, picking up again the dynamic notion of the three characteristics of confraternities and Church organizations, said that this “ecclesial spirit” means “walking together.” He says it means living in communion with other disciples but also in communion “with the local Church, with the Bishops and with Dioceses.”
- Pope Francis had to make this ecclesial dimension explicit because over the course of centuries some confraternities, just like other associations and disciples, have given into the temptation to go rogue, to try to become autonomous, to do their own thing.
- It’s a temptation as old as ancient Corinth, where the disciples at the time of St. Paul were separating themselves into camps, with some saying they belonged to Paul, others to Cephas (Peter), and others to Apollo, rather than seeing that fundamentally they’re all supposed to belong to Christ. The temptation got stronger later in the first century when many relatively Corinthian Christians decided they didn’t like their priests and tried to force their removal, getting the fourth Pope, St. Clement, to write them a letter saying they can’t separate themselves from the Church in that way. We’ve seen that temptation from the great Divider since the beginning. The same one who sought to separate Adam and Eve from God and from each other has sought to slither among the Christ’s relationship with his Bride the Church, as we’ve seen in the theological schisms of the early Church, the great schism between East and West now approach a said millennial anniversary in just 28 years, the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, all the way through the latest schismatic act by the Society of St. Pius X two months ago.
- Jesus, however, was not a polygamist. He didn’t choose several or tens of thousands of brides. He chose one and laid down his life to make her holy. He prayed during the Last Supper for us to have the same unity with him and with each other as exists between the three persons of the Godhead. “Father may they be one,” he implored three times, and then told us why, “so that the world may know that you sent me and love them just as much as you loved me.” Without our communion, without people being able to witness it, he suggested, people wouldn’t believe either that he was still with us or that God loved them if they couldn’t see that love characterizing our own interrelations. As we prepare for 2033, we are preparing to mark the 2000th anniversary of that prayer. And hence authentic Christian unity, which must remain a perennial priority of the Church, must become a more urgent one. That’s what Pope Francis was calling confraternities to champion and to exemplify as leaven for the entire Bride of Christ.
- We know that in the early Church, outside of the conspicuous problems in Corinth, in many places it existed. We see it in post-Pentecost Jerusalem where St. Luke tells us that the community of believers had all things in common: they ate together, they prayed together, they went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem together, and many sold what they had and laid the proceeds at the feet of the apostles to share with those were in most need. They were doing what a real family that loves each other does. They prioritized being together with each other and God and truly cared for each other. This was at the heart of the explosive growth of the Church. There are ultimately two reasons why the Church was able to convert much of the Roman empire in such a short period of time. The first is because of martyrdom, the regular public witness by sane men and women, young and old, that God was real, that he took on our nature and gave his life to save ours, and rose on the third day. They were able to go singing and smiling to torturous deaths because they had faith in him and his resurrection and loved him enough to give their lives in exchange for his giving his. The second reason was because of the witness of love for one another. In an empire in which the inheritance was given to the first-born son and all other siblings were left begging for scraps, Christians while still alive were sharing all they had with those who became their brothers and sisters through baptism only days before. The example of that loving sacrifice showed people the essence of the Christian faith and, despite the risks of their own martyrdom, led so many to want to seek new life in the waters of baptism. The first Christians were corresponding to Jesus’ prayer for unity and their mutual love and communion, their ecclesial spirit, convinced so many of their contemporaries that God the Father had indeed sent God the Son into our human reality and loves them just as much as he loves Jesus, … and Jesus loves us, … and the Christians were loving each other.
- It is of course that people can separate themselves from Christ and his Bride. There can be lost sheep who wander off. Christ the Good Shepherd never ceases to come after them, to save them, but he wants to carry them back to reintegrate them to the sheepfold. The Father of the Prodigal Son wants to bring both his younger son as well as his judgmental older son into the house for the celebration. Jesus indeed sends out his Church in every age to invite everyone to the wedding feast, not simply as guests but as the Bride. While faith is indeed personal, it’s not meant to individualistic; it’s meant to be ecclesial, it’s meant to be familial, it’s meant to be in communion with God and each other. When Christ calls us to follow him, he calls us to walk with him together with all others whom he has lovingly called. He summons us to love each other as he has loved us first. He calls us to forgive each other as he has first had mercy on us. To be united to God means to participate in the love that characteristics Trinitarian relations, including the love that Father, Son and Holy Spirit has for our neighbor, even those who have made themselves our enemy. And we’re called to reconcile with those who have made themselves our adversaries along the journey.
- I have had the great joy over the course of my priesthood to lead many pilgrimages to Rome, to the Holy Land, to the Marian Shrines in Europe, and to the tombs of the saints in the U.S. and abroad. I also had the privilege two years ago to help lead the Seton Route of the National Eucharistic Procession, walking 65 days from New Haven, Connecticut, to Indianapolis. These are clearly among the great highlights of my life, in which I grew in knowledge and love of the Lord, of Our Lady, of various heroic saints, but also shared these experiences with faithful from my parishes, with young people from my various apostolates, with my fellow National Eucharistic pilgrims. I always explain to those who sign up for these journeys that every earthly pilgrimage is supposed to help us on the pilgrimage of earthly life, as we seek to follow Christ the Way all the way to the Father’s eternal right side. As we prepare for 2033, it is a time for us to become more grateful for the fact that Jesus has called others to accompany us and us to accompany them. Just as much as Jesus sent out his first 12 apostles and later 72 disciples not individually but together with another, so he sends us out not as lone-rangers, but sometimes hand-in-hand in marriage, and sometimes unite our brothers and sisters in Christ’s body.
- Pope Leo is explicitly calling us to live this ecclesial spirit more effectively. He inherited a Church that has multiple divisions within a world being ripped apart by conflicts of various orders. And he wants us to become in Illo uno, unum, one in the one Christ. He has made peace and unity the priorities of his pontificate and we know we will never have peace if we’re divided. The bimillennial anniversary of Christ’s public ministry, his preaching, his passion, death, resurrection, and sending of the Holy Spirit, is meant to be a time in which we genuinely seek what Christ seeks, so that we can become a truly evangelizing community, radiant with the peace Christ gave us and leaves, the peace he sent out to wish to every household, the peace that is the first fruit he announced on Easter Sunday evening.
- Soon-to-be Blessed Fulton Sheen was a great preacher and defender of the Church, first in an age in which non-Catholics and many Protestants failed to understand the importance of the Church. He wrote several books on ecclesiology, so that we would be able to recognize that to appreciate Christ, not to mention to love him, is to love the Church because he loved the Church. He worked indefatigably for 16 years as the National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies to try to bring the Gospel to everyone on earth, so that we might, in fact, be one, all 100 out of 100, or to use today’s numbers, all 8.1 out of 8.1 billion. When he was appointed Bishop of Rochester, however, the year after the Second Vatican Council was finished, he began to see how easy it was for people to be divided from the Church and grow increasingly separated from Christ. Many did not want to love their neighbor if their neighbor was of a different race, culture or economic background, or had different political ideas. He likewise began to see and oppose the sins and dissent that started to metastasize after the Council, with some invoking the so-called “Spirit of Vatican II” to justify rejecting any teaching or practice of the faith that they didn’t like. He brought to that fight the attitudes he believe God the Father would have, that the Blessed Mother would have, that Jesus himself would have, seeing the family of the Church so divided. And he offered up his sufferings for Church unity and for the conversion of many who were saying, “Christ yes, the Church no.” Through books, articles, homilies, interviews and every means he could muster, he tried to communicate that Church unity, that a true ecclesial spirit, is not just organizational, but is a sign of Christ himself. It is a witness to the world. It makes the Church’s supernatural character more visible. Church unity comes from Jesus, who explicitly desires it, not from human consensus. Far more than just getting along, it requires genuine adherence to the truth Christ entrusted to his Church. And he outed one of the biggest reasons for the lack of Church unity. It is a spirit of pride that leads to individualism, from people saying, “I got to be me!,” and obsessing about my opinions, my preferences, my group, even my pope or my preferred commandments. The remedy of course is to put on the mind of Christ and to think with the Church, Christ’s bride, and with the successors of Peter and the apostles down to our own age.
- As we journey together on the road leading to 2033, let us in a particular way focus on how everything in Jesus’ public ministry, not to mention his passion, death, resurrection and the sending of the Holy Spirit, can be seen as the way he was forming the Church, her spousal and familial identity, her divinely-instituted hierarchy, her life-saving mission. Let us rejoice that he has not called us to follow him simply as individuals, but in familial communion with each other, with all our gifts building upon and multiplying the gifts he has given to others. Like the first Christians after Pentecost, let us respond to the Holy Spirit’s help to pray together, to eat together, to go on pilgrimage together, and to sacrifice for each other, not just here in St. Louis but beyond. We are indeed one with the one Christ. Let us prove it by the way we live this journey, so that the world may know that God the Father sent the Son, loves them just as much as he loves Jesus, and calls them, like he has called us, into a communion that is meant to last forever.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download