Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Chapel of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, New York
Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
October 19, 2025
Ex 17:8-13, Ps 121, 2 Tim 3:14-4:2; Lk 18:1-8
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.19.25_Homily_1.mp3
The following text guided the homily:
* Today is World Mission Sunday, the day on which the Church universal prays in unison to the Harvest Master for laborers for his harvest across the world, for the laborers already at work, for each of us to recognize that we’re laborers, for the fruitfulness of that labor and the salvation of those for w hom we’re laboring. It’s a day on which the Church seeks to put our faith-filled prayer into action, sacrificing to care for the work of missionaries in the now 1,130 missionary dioceses and territories across the globe where the local Church is too young, too poor, or too persecuted to be self-sustaining. Earlier this week, Pope Leo released an unprecedented video he recorded for World Mission Sunday so that it could be played in preparation for this Mass in which he emphasized the special importance of this day: “Dear Brothers and Sisters,” he said, “on World Mission Sunday every year, the whole Church prays, united, particularly for missionaries and the fruitfulness of their apostolic labors. When I served as a missionary priest and bishop in Peru, I saw first-hand how the faith, the prayer and the generosity shown on World Mission Sunday can transform entire communities. I urge every Catholic parish in the world to take part in World Mission Sunday. Your prayers and your support will help spread the Gospel, provide for pastoral and catechetical programs, help to build new churches, and care for the health and educational needs of our brothers and sisters in mission territories. This October 19, as we reflect together on our baptismal call to be ‘missionaries of hope among the peoples,’ let us commit ourselves anew to the sweet and joyful task of bringing Christ Jesus our Hope to the ends of the earth. Thank you for everything you will do to help me help missionaries throughout the world. God bless you all!” Two weeks ago, I was privileged to be with him in St. Peter’s Square for the Jubilee of the Missionary World, which he called a “wonderful opportunity to rekindle in ourselves the awareness of our missionary vocation, which arises from the desire to bring the joy and consolation of the Gospel to everyone. … The entire Church is missionary, and it is urgent … that we ‘go forth and preach the Gospel to all: to all places, on all occasions, without hesitation, reluctance or fear.’ … We are called to renew in ourselves the fire of our missionary vocation.” So today is a day to renew that fire, to experience what the prophet Jeremiah once confessed, “Within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot” (Jer 20:9). It’s to feel the explosive evangelical fervor of St. Paul who exclaimed, “Woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel!” (1 Cor9:16). It’s to remember that by our baptism and especially through our Confirmation, the Holy Spirit has come down upon us with a tongue of fire so that we might share our faith with burning love. This is why you became missionaries of that love in order to satiate Jesus’ infinite thirst to have others, especially the poorest of the poor, experience it. That’s why I became a priest. That’s why each of us was created, redeemed, and entrusted by Jesus with the completion of his saving mission.
* The whole mission of the Church begins with prayer. It’s how it began with Jesus. As the future Pope Benedict XVI preached during the Great Jubilee of 2000,
