Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Chapel of The Pontifical Mission Societies, St. Petersburg, Florida
Wednesday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
October 29, 2025
Rom 8:26-30, Ps 13, Lk 13:22-30
 
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The following points were attempted in the homily:

* “Lord, will only a few be saved?,” someone from the crowd asked Jesus today. He didn’t reply by satisfying the person’s curiosity, because he didn’t come from heaven to earth to answering the interrogatives of inquiring minds. He had come from heaven to earth to save us, and so he responded not by saying how many are saved by how any is saved. “Strive to enter through the narrow gate.” The word translated as “strive” is the Greek word to “agonize.” To be saved, to enter the Kingdom, to get to Heaven, in other words, we need to agonize, like Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane, to conform our will to the Father’s. We need to work harder than an undrafted free agent gives everything he’s got in an NFL training camp to make the cut. The width of the narrow door to Heaven is the span of a needle’s eye, the girth of the cross, something that is anything but easy to pass through.
* Over the last several decades, people have gotten the notion that the Christian life is easy. Most people think, rather, that everyone gets to Heaven — except perhaps those who don’t like us, serial killers, public smokers and those people we don’t like. Such an attitude is a diabolical ambush. Jesus never taught that the Christian life is a cakewalk. He who is the Gate of the sheepfold tells us that we need to agonize to enter into him. Jesus said these words as he was on the road to Jerusalem, and we know what happened when he got to Jerusalem. He entered into his agony, the agony that led to our salvation and opened up the narrow door. But we need to be willing to follow him along that path of sacrificial love.
* Jesus says in the Gospel today that many will seek to enter through the narrow door but not make it. They will be left outside the door, pleading, “We ate and drank in Your presence and You taught in our streets,” and, as Jesus added in a similar passage in the Sermon on the Mount, exclaiming, ‘Did we not prophesy in Your name, and cast out demons in Your name, and do many miracles in Your name.” Jesus says that God will then reply, “I never knew you” (Lk 13:25-27; Mt 7:21-23). Jesus is emphasizing that it’s not enough to have heard Him speak. It’s not sufficient to have eaten and drunk with Him, even the Holy Eucharist. It’s not adequate to proclaim the Gospel in His name, do exorcisms or even work miracles. After all, Judas Iscariot did all of these things, but he never really knew Who Jesus was. We need to enter into intimate friendship and communion with Him. We need to follow Him not just on the outside, but on the inside. We need to become His true friend. We need to agonize to let go of everything in our life that’s not ordered to God, that’s not compatible with the life of faith. We need to squeeze humbly into Jesus and live in full-time loving friendship with him.
* If this were simply a thing of willpower, we would have reason to despair. But it’s not. St. Paul tells us that God responds to our weakness. He sends the Holy Spirit to teach us “how to pray as we ought.” The Holy Spirit helps us to pray not by putting words on our lips but by changing who we are as we pray, so that we might pray conscious that we are beloved sons and daughters of God crying out “Abba, Father.” He transforms us so that we can live as we pray and confidently follow Jesus along the narrow path, so that we will be confident that all our agony, all are sufferings will be worth it.

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Church of St. Mary and Our Lady of Grace, St. Petersburg, Florida
Staff Enrichment Day for TPMS-USA
Feast of SS. Simon and Jude, Apostles
October 28, 2025
Eph 2:19-22, Ps 19, Lk 6:12-16
 
To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 
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The following text guided the homily: 

* St. Paul in today’s first reading tells the Ephesians and us that our Christian existence is “built upon the foundation of the Apostles.” Today’s providential feast of the apostles SS. Simon and Jude during our staff enrichment day gives us a chance to ponder our continuation of the mission Jesus entrusted to them and grounding that mission more firmly on the foundation of what the Lord did and continues to do through these two apostles. I’d like to frame our life and mission within the context of what the Lord did in their life. We can ponder five different aspects.
* The first thing we can examine is the theme of our calling. The apostles’ vocation, we see, was born from Christ’s prayer. Jesus had pulled an all-nighter praying to his Father about whom he should choose and praying for those he would choose. His prayer was not just a single invocation, but a persevering intercession. This prayer for those whom he would call continued throughout his public life and we can presume even after his Ascension. During the ordination rite of the Last Supper we see how fervently Jesus prayed to the Father. “I pray for them,” he said aloud, “I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me because they are yours. … Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are. … I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one. … Consecrate them in the truth. …  I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.” And then he prayed for the apostles’ work to be fruitful, for all “those who will believe in me through their word,” and prayed for their salvation, “I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me, … that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.” Jesus’ ongoing prayer would take on a very specific form, as we would see in Jesus’ Holy Thursday dialogue with St. Peter, “Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed that your [singular] own faith may not fail; and once you have turned back, you must strengthen your brothers.” It’s important regularly for us to take the time to recall with gratitude and wonder that our Christian vocation, likewise, has its beginning in Jesus’ prayer. Just as much as Jesus prayed all night and then called Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James, Simon, Jude, and Judas Iscariot,” so he has prayed and called each of us. He has prayed for each of us, to keep us in the Father’s name, to unite us to God and to each other, to consecrate us in the truth of God’s word, in the truth of Jesus’ own consecration to the Father. Jesus has prayed for us that our faith may not fail and that we will strengthen the faith of each other and those we serve. Jesus continues to pray for us. He’s praying for us at this Mass. He’s praying for us when we have difficulties in our missionary work. His persevering prayer for us is an example for us to persevere in prayer together with him during it as well.
* The second theme is our discipleship. When Jesus came down the mountain, St. Luke tells us, he chose the twelve from among the “disciples,” from among those who were already as the Greek word disciple means Jesus’ “students,” who were zealously following him,

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Staff Enrichment Day
The Pontifical Mission Societies USA
St. Petersburg, Florida
October 28, 2025
 
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10.28.25 Looking at Artificial Intelligence Through Catholic Anthropology and Ethics

 

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
TPMS Office, St. Petersburg, Florida
Monday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Votive Mass for those Suffering
October 27, 2025
Rom 8:12-17, Ps 16, Lk 13:10-17
 
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 
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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* To understand the contrast between Jesus and the leader of the synagogue with regard to the crippled woman in the Gospel, it is worthwhile to grasp the categories given to us by St. Paul in the first reading. And to do that, it’s important to understand it in context with what has come before in the first two weeks of this biennial month-long gift of the Letter to the Romans at daily Mass.
* We have already seen the distinction between those who view justification by grace received in faith working through love from those who depend fundamentally on their own works. On Saturday, we had the beginning of Chapter 8 of the Letter to the Romans, which is the fulcrum not only of this letter but in my opinion of the Christian life, the distinction between life according to the flesh and life according to the Holy Spirit. St. Paul advanced the same distinction we have had in previous chapters, between living according to ourselves in our fallenness or living by God and the power of his life. In today’s passage, St. Paul advanced the argument even more, saying there is a difference between a spirit of slavery and one of adoption, between fear of God and filiation. The chief of the synagogue in the Gospel, like many of the scribes the Pharisees, basically approached the covenant as a bunch of laws rather than a relationship with a Legislator. The scribes and Pharisees scrupulously wanted to keep to the letter of every prescription, but in doing so they missed the weightier aspects and put the focus on themselves. Even though they knew that they couldn’t take the Sabbath off from caring for their animals, they failed to exercise similar charity toward a sick woman, criticizing Jesus for caring for her on the Sabbath. They so lacked a spirit of filiation that they failed to see in her a sister rather than a stranger, as someone far more valuable than all the oxen and donkeys in the world. They also failed to grasp the mind and heart of the Legislator, who happens to be God the Father, blind to how he would never want us to give up acts of charity in order to honor him. We heard yesterday at Sunday Mass that we’re called to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and, sharing God’s love, love our neighbor with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. Such acts of love are not only permitted on the Sabbath, but they are particularly made for the Sabbath!
* This woman was crippled for 18 years and could not look up. Not only did she have a serious physical malady, but she also had a spiritual problem, as the Fathers of the Church commented: she just couldn’t look up toward God. Her eyes were constantly toward the ground, to earthly difficulties. She came into the synagogue because she still wanted God. She still knew she needed Him. It was on that Sabbath that Jesus, seeing her completely incapable of standing erect, said to her, “Woman, you are liberated from your infirmity.” Jesus didn’t use her name. He used a vocative that recalled the beginning of creation, one that foretold how we would call his mother on Calvary. He was going to treat this woman with the care and compassion with which he wanted to treat every woman: “be free of your infirmity.” He laid his hands on her head, at once she stood up straight, and began to glorify God, not just because she was cured, but because she was now able to raise up her heart,

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
October 26, 2025
Sir 35:12-14.16-18, Ps 34, 2 Tim 4:6-8.16-18, Lk 18:9-14
 
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The following text guided the homily: 

* In the next few weeks, I’ll have a chance to help lead three different retreats, one for deacons, another for priests and the third for diocesan directors of the Pontifical Mission Societies. One of the classic practices when one goes on a retreat is to meditate about one’s death. Since we never know the day or the hour when Christ will come for us, pondering the end of our life helps us better to learn how to live, to focus on what really matters in life, to prioritize what’s truly important, and to order our choices wisely. It’s a practice that the Church encourages all the faithful every November — which begins Saturday — when we ponder the four last things of death, judgment, heaven and hell. As helpful as meditating upon our death is, there’s an even more useful practice: entering into the holy thoughts and prudent preparations of the saints as they prepare for death. Today, in the second reading, we are given the privilege to read what is essentially St. Paul’s last will and testament. He was in a Roman prison, preparing for execution and writing what he thought might be his final words to his spiritual son St. Timothy. He said he was already being poured out as a sacred sacrificial offering to God — like the Romans used to finish their sacrifices by pouring wine on the ground to the pagan gods — and that the time of his departure from this life was near. In one phrase, one of the most powerful and memorable lines in Sacred Scripture and human history, he summarized all he had sought to do in his life since his conversion outside the gates of Damascus. He wrote. “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” As we think of our life and the time of our eventual departure from it, St. Paul would be urging us, like he urged the young St. Timothy, to make these three things our priorities, so that we might echo them throughout our life and at the hour of our death.
* The first thing he writes is, “I have fought the good fight.” He points to the truth that the Christian life isn’t easy. It isn’t supposed to be. It’s a battle. The word he uses for fight is the Greek word for agony. He says he’s agonized through the “good and beautiful agony.” St. Paul heroically and agonizingly battled through multiple imprisonments, beatings, stonings, shipwrecks, labors, sleepless nights, hunger and thirst, anxiety for the Churches, betrayals, abandonments and more (2 Cor 11:23-28). But he never gave up the fight. He competed like a champion. And he wanted to help strengthen St. Timothy. He was indicating that in the Christian life, we must struggle against our weaknesses and failings, we need to war against the devil, principalities and powers and unending infernal attempts to turn us from God, we must contend against the temptations, obstacles and difficulties others and human life in general can place in our way to make it harder to live and share our faith. Despite all the blows that he took in life, St. Paul told St. Timothy in today’s passage, “The Lord stood by me and gave me strength.” The same Lord will stand by us. That’s why St. Paul could write to St. Timothy at the end of his first letter, “Fight the good fight of faith” (1 Tim 6:12). The Christian life is meant to train us to be fighters, to be strong and resilient, to be heroic like Jesus, like Paul, like the martyrs young and old throughout the centuries,

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Redemptor Hominis Chapel, Pope St. John Paul II Shrine, Washington, DC
Friday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Anthony Mary Claret
October 24, 2025
Rom 7:18-25, Ps 119, Lk 12:54-59
 
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 
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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today Jesus speaks about our reading the signs of the times spiritually as well and meticulously as we do meteorologically, to know that all of Christian life is a journey to meet the “Magistrate” and to have us reconcile with God and with others, and do reparation and restitution, as we’re heading toward the court. He urges us to settle, to plea bargain, to plead guilty, before we get to the court and receive the verdict. As St. John Chrysostom would say, now is the time of mercy; later is the time of justice.
* Learning how to read the signs of the times is important to see what we need to do with regard to the experience of concupiscence St. Paul describes in today’s first reading. He says, “I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want.” Despite the fact that he “take[s] delight in the law of God in my inner self,” he recognized “in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind.” Jesus had warned people of this battle between spirit and flesh, telling him that “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Peter, we know, was willing to die for the Lord, but when push came to shove, he denied even knowing him. St. Paul was himself recognizing this battle between weak flesh and willing spirit. He struggled with it so much that he prayed at the end, “Miserable one that I am? Who will deliver me from this mortal body?” It is a consoling fact for Christians in every age that even great apostles struggled against concupiscence, too.
* Before we answer St. Paul’s question about deliverance from concupiscence, we need highlight two things we find in the passage that are key to the Christian moral life. The first is that knowing is not enough. Plato once taught that all that we need to do the good is to know the good. But that’s not true because, like SS. Peter and Paul, we do not do the good we want, but we do the evil we do not want. As much as we say, “Lord, teach me your statutes” and he responds with that instruction, it’s not enough; we also need to win the battle to do what he teaches, having our spirit of obedience triumph over the weakness that makes obedience at times so hard. The second thing we learn is that resolutions alone are enough. We need to set them and strengthen our will, but at the same time, it’s not enough for us to set them; keeping them requires this same triumph over spirit over flesh.
* So we come back to the question: “Who will deliver me from this mortal body?” There are three basic answers, one we get from today’s Gospel, and two we’ll get tomorrow, as we enter into one of the most important chapters in the Bible, Romans 8, which was St. Paul’s answer to his interrogative. The first response is prayer. When Jesus told Peter in the Gospel that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, he gave him the medicine for that diagnosis: to pray, that he would not undergo the test. We need to recognize our weakness and similarly turn to the Lord for help. The second is the Holy Spirit. Jesus promised that whenever we ask the Father for anything, he sends the Holy Spirit: “If you who are evil know how to give good things to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” The Father gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask him for anything. It’s the Holy Spirit, as we’ll be hearing tomorrow and early next week,

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
 
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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,

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
NYC Leonine Chapter, IESE Business School
Thursday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
October 16, 2025
Rom 3:21-30, Ps 130, Lk 11:47-54
 
To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click here: 
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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Meaning of faith and how we’re justified by grace, received by faith, working through love.
* We’re supposed to live our faith rather than pretend as if we’re really living by faith in God like many of the Scribes and Pharisees.
* The 350th anniversary of the apparitions of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque are an occasion for us to see how we are receiving and responding to the grace of God received by faith living out in love. Jesus spoke to her and through her to us about the way we respond to him in the Sacrament of Love, the Holy Eucharist.
* Tonight is an opportunity to make him in the Eucharist the biggest difference in our life, to treat him with reverential, with passion, with holiness, with praise.

 
The readings for tonight’s Mass were:
Reading 1
ROM 3:21-30
Brothers and sisters:
Now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law,
though testified to by the law and the prophets,
the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ
for all who believe.
For there is no distinction;
all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God.
They are justified freely by his grace
through the redemption in Christ Jesus,
whom God set forth as an expiation,
through faith, by his Blood, to prove his righteousness
because of the forgiveness of sins previously committed,
through the forbearance of God–
to prove his righteousness in the present time,
that he might be righteous
and justify the one who has faith in Jesus.
What occasion is there then for boasting? It is ruled out.
On what principle, that of works?
No, rather on the principle of faith.
For we consider that a person is justified by faith
apart from works of the law.
Does God belong to Jews alone?
Does he not belong to Gentiles, too?
Yes, also to Gentiles, for God is one
and will justify the circumcised on the basis of faith
and the uncircumcised through faith.

Responsorial Psalm
PS 130:1B-2, 3-4, 5-6AB
R. (7) With the Lord there is mercy, and fullness of redemption.
Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;
LORD, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to my voice in supplication.
R. With the Lord there is mercy, and fullness of redemption.
If you, O LORD, mark iniquities,
Lord, who can stand?
But with you is forgiveness,
that you may be revered.
R. With the Lord there is mercy, and fullness of redemption.
I trust in the LORD;
my soul trusts in his word.
My soul waits for the LORD
more than sentinels wait for the dawn.
R. With the Lord there is mercy, and fullness of redemption.


Gospel
LK 11:47-54
The Lord said:
“Woe to you who build the memorials of the prophets
whom your fathers killed.
Consequently, you bear witness and give consent
to the deeds of your ancestors,
for they killed them and you do the building.
Therefore, the wisdom of God said,

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Blue Army Shrine, Ashbury, NJ
108th Anniversary Celebration of the Sixth Apparition of Our Lady of Fatima
October 13, 2025
 
To watch a video of the meditation, please click below: 

 
 
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The following outline guided the meditation: 

* Introduction

* Today under rain that is evocative of the downpours that occurred in the Cova d’Iria 108 years ago, we joyfully celebrate the anniversary of the “exclamation point” of the Fatima apparitions: the “Miracle of the Sun” that took place on October 13, 2017. This Miracle involved a clear prediction, a solar phenomenon, and a scientifically inexplicable general dessication, all three of which combine in a compelling way to help skeptics gain confidence in Our Lady’s appearances and believers gain motivation to act on the message Our Lady came to Fatima to impart.
* Let’s begin with the prediction. During the third apparition of Our Lady in July, ten year-old Lucia, prompted by the advice she had received from others, said to the woman from heaven, “I would like to ask who you are and whether you will do a miracle so that everyone will know for certain that you have appeared to us.” The woman replied, “In October, I will tell you who I am and what I want. I will then perform a miracle so that all may believe.” When Lucia related to others that response, suspense quickly began to build. In August, the Lady reiterated, “In the last month I will perform a miracle so that all may believe,” and in September, she said again, “In October I will perform a miracle so that all may believe.” By the time October 13 arrived, a vast throng of about 70,000 had assembled around the Cova d’Iria in Fatima as the children arrived to pray the Rosary. Those crowd included secularists, anticlerical forces, journalists and skeptics, all of whom wanted to be eyewitnesses, when no miracle took place, of what they termed an ongoing “fraud.” It had been raining incessantly since the previous night, the fields were soaked and muddy, and despite umbrellas, the people were drenched.
* When the children arrived, slightly before 1 pm, the woman appeared, seen again only by the shepherd children. She said she wanted a chapel built, asked them to continue to pray the Rosary every day, revealed herself as “the Lady of the Rosary,” divulged that World War I would soon end, and called on everyone to amend their lives and ask God’s forgiveness. Then she rose toward the east and turned the palms of her hands toward the dark clouds that were obscuring the sun. Immediately the sun broke through the clouds and appeared to be an opaque grey disk that turned to silver. “Look at the sun!,” Lucia shouted, and people found to their surprise that they could peer directly at the intense sun without being blinded. Over the course of the next ten minutes, the sun whirled madly, “danced” like a giant circle of fire, careened toward earth and zig-zagged back to its normal position. People shrieked, wept and dropped to their knees in the mud and water. The colors of everything — the air and ground, trees, faces, and clothes — changed yellow, blue, amethyst, red and white. Soon the cry “miracle!” started being heard everywhere.
* Some assert that it was a Mass hallucination. Atheist Richard Dawkins, in his book The God Delusion, admits, “It is not easy to explain how seventy thousand people could share the same hallucination,” but then he went on nevertheless to propound that they all had to be hallucinating collectively because it would be “even harder to accept that it really happened without t...

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Blue Army Shrine, Ashbury, NJ
108th Anniversary Celebration of the Sixth Apparition of Our Lady of Fatima
Votive Mass of Our Lady of Fatima
October 13, 2025
Jud 13:17-20.15:9, Lk 1:46-55, Lk 11:27-28
 
To watch a video of the homily (and of the Mass in which it took place), please click below:

 
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 
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The following text guided the homily: 
Today’s celebration of the culmination of Our Lady’s Apparitions in Fatima and the great Miracle of the Sun is unlike any other in Church history, because it is taking place in the first Jubilee of Hope in ecclesiastical annals. And like any Church holy year, it’s meant to influence everything the Church does during that time. And the theme of hope has a great deal to do with what Mary said and did and tried to provoke all of us to do 108 years ago in Fatima.
What Hope Is
What is hope? When Pope Francis gave us his Bull of Indiction for the Jubilee of Hope, he didn’t define what hope is, because he said, everyone already has an idea of what it is. When Pope Benedict published his encyclical on hope in 2007, he likewise did not give us a clear definition of hope, but he did give us a very important clue. Quoting St. Paul who in his letter to the first Christians in Ephesus reminded them that before the Gospel arrived in their famous city, they were “living without hope” because they were “living without God in the world” (Eph 2:14), Pope Benedict implied that hope is precisely “living with God in the world.” We know that this is true. Everything changes when we know that Christ is with us. Think about any challenge you’re facing now, or any major challenge you have faced in life, if you could see Jesus present with you, if you would hear him whispering into your ears or your heart, “Don’t be afraid. I am with you. We will meet this challenge together. Remember, nothing is impossible for God,” would we not be filled with enormous hope that that challenge won’t have the last word? St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, who built an empire of hope for Italian immigrants in New York City and then spread hope in 67 missions in 11 different countries, did it all based by echoing the hope St. Paul’s gave witness to in his Letter to the Philippians: “I can do all things in him who strengthens me” (4:13). To recognize that God-with-us, Emmanuel, is still very much with us, and that he can strengthen us to do even the humanly impossible, that with faith in him the size of a mustard seed we can even transplant mountain ranges, we are filled with hope not matter how tall those mountains seem to be.
The Hope Mary Gave the Shepherd Children
This is something Our Lady came to teach us in Fatima in summoning us to consecrate ourselves to her Immaculate Heart. I’ve always been blown away by what Mary taught the three young shepherd children, 7-year-old Jacinta, 9-year-old Francisco and 10-year-old Lucia. She had shown them a vision of hell where poor sinners go. She had given them a glimpse of the destruction that would come from atheistic communism. She had even permitted them to see how much the Church would suffer, with a vast city of Christian corpses and even a bishop in white assassinated.
After these vision, Mary said to them, “You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go,” a clear indication that Hell is a real possibility of human freedom and doesn’t seem to be empty. “To save them, God wishes…,” she continued, and told them about a specific practice. I think it’s worthwhile to pause to consider what we think would have be...

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
September 28, 2025
Amos 6:1,4-7, Ps 146, 1 Tim 6:11-16, Lk 16:19-31
 
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The following text guided the homily: 

* Today Jesus gives us all a parable that begins with a rich man who was adorned in royal purple clothes and exquisite priestly linen who dined sumptuously each day. In the first reading, the prophet Amos describes people in Jerusalem who slept on beds of ivory — just think about what that cost! — eating lambs and calves, having jam sessions on harps, drinking wine not from glasses but from bowls, and anointing themselves with the best oils, the ancient version of the best skin care products, perfumes and colognes. These figures are those whom many in our culture are trained to aspire to emulate, to be rich and carefree, woofing down lamb, veal, filets and caviar, guzzling down precious aged wine and liqueurs, having private concerts of the finest musicians, dressing to the nines like royalty and sleeping on beds made out of the trunks of elephants. Today we’d add garages full of fancy automobiles, private jets, stables of horses, marble floors, and perhaps golden toilet seats. It all sounds pretty good to materialist ears.
* But in a huge wake up call, God through Amos proclaims “woe” to those who live this way and the Lord Jesus in the parable describes how the rich man ended up going to hell, across an unpassable chasm from eternal happiness, in torment because of flames and tortured over the fate of family members living the same vain lifestyle. Through today’s readings, especially by the Gospel parable, God communicates to us quite clearly that he wants us to live differently. He does not want any of us to remain unmoved when we hear the story of Lazarus, covered with sores, being licked and consoled by the compassion of stray dogs, longing to eat just the rich man’s leftovers. He does not want any of us to remain unstirred, either, by the desperation of the rich man after he dies. What Jesus wants us to realize is not simply the state each of them is in, but the fact that each predicament was totally preventable.
* In the Parable, the rich man goes to Hell not because he was rich, not because he had earned his money in an immoral way, not because he had been asked by Lazarus for help and refused, not because he had sent dogs to pester Lazarus or had done anything at all evil to him. He went to Hell because when there was a poor man at his gate, he simply did nothing. He was condemned not because of anything he had done, but precisely because of what he hadn’t done: he was so caught up in himself that he didn’t make any effort at all to help out a man who was struggling and dying in his midst. He simply ignored him.
* In St. Matthew’s Gospel (Mt 25:31-46), Jesus made clear that when he judges us, he will separate us into two groups on the basis of how we have treated the poor and needy among us. To those on his right who will be saved, he will say, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you since the beginning of the world, for I was hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, ill or imprisoned and you cared for me.” But to those on his left, he will declare with infinite sadness, “Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, because I was hungry and you gave me no food, thirsty and you gave me no drink, naked and you gave me no clothes, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, ill and in prison and you didn’t care for me.” The condemned will poignantly ask, “Lord when did we see you hungry,

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Mount Alvernia Retreat Center, Wappinger Falls, New York
“Living by Faith in the Love God has for us”
Retreat Conference for Manhattan College Alumni
September 26, 2025
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The following was the outline of the talk: 

* Introduction

* Theme of the Retreat: “So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them” (1 Jn 4:16).
* John’s whole approach to evangelization was to focus on the love of God.
* Story of St. Jerome. “Little children love one another”
* Not enough to know “of” the love God has for us. Have to know it personally. To experience it.
* But we realize that it can seem too good to be true. That’s why we have to believe in it. We have to stake our life on it. Even if we don’t “feel” it, we have to live it.
* We have a communion with God from the day of our Baptism, but we are able to experience communion with God ultimately through love, because God is love.
* What Jesus said during the Last Supper:

* Just as the Father loves me, so I love you. We have to recognize we’re loved and in fact lovable. If we don’t love ourselves it’s going to be hard for us to believe in the love God has for us.
* Live on in my love. We can’t run away from it. We have to know and believe it.
* You will live in my love if you keep my commandments, just like I have kept the Father’s commandments and live in his love. The commandments train us to love. This is the path for us to experience it.
* Love one another as I have loved you.

* Jesus doesn’t ask us to love him as he has loved us, but love one another as he has loved us.
* Peter after the Resurrection. His love for Jesus would be shown in the way he fed and tended Jesus’ sheep and lambs.
* John: if we say we love God but don’t love our neighbor, we are a liar and the love of God is not in us.


* Therese’s vocation, to be love in the heart of the Church. We all have a similar vocation. In order for us to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and our neighbor as ourselves, we have to begin with the love of God. “In this is love,” St. John will say elsewhere, “not that we have loved God but that he has loved us and given himself as an expiation for our sins.”


* Various ways God reveals his love for us. Know and believe in him loving us in these ways.

* Baptism

* See what love the Father has bestowed on us in letting us be called children of God.
* Divine Filiation.
* God the Father: “This is my son/daughter, in whom I am well pleased.”
* Most important day of our life
* Sin wiped away. Temple of God. Incorporated into the Church
* The joy of a Chinese convert at Columbia. Weiling Kong. Art. Baptism. She knew what it meant. She knew it could mean suffering. But she came and you couldn’t wipe the smile off her face for years.
* Another convert, a law school student. Claire Addinquy. Secular France. Faith of her grandmother. Finally she could act on it. Extraordinary joy worth selling everything to obtain.
* A third, Marin Minamaya. Several Guinness world records. Knew the consequences and how to change and made immediate changes. Asked if she might sing at her baptism. O Lord, I am not worthy.
* Each felt the love of the call of God to be his daughter. They believed in it. They chose.
* In the early Church, the first Christians needed to wait until that value became so strong that they would be willing to suf...

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
New York City Leonine Forum Chapter
IESE Business School
September 25, 2025
 
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LF 2025 Christian Anthropology Man in the Modern World

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Leonine Forum NYC Chapter, IESE Business School
Thursday of the 25th Week of Ordinary Time, Year I
Votive Mass of the Holy Spirit
September 25, 2025
Hg 1:1-8, Ps 149, Lk 9:7-9
 
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The following points were attempted in the homily:

* As we begin the Leonine Forum together with this Mass of the Holy Spirit, we focus straight out on the way the Lord wants to build us up this year by helping us to build our life on him.
* We are now in the midst of three weeks of focus in the first reading on the post-exilic writings during which the Church has us ponder, if there are no proper feasts, on three days of Ezra, two days of Haggai, three days of Zechariah, two days of Nehemiah, two days of Baruch, three days of Jonah, one day of Malachi and two days of Joel.  These post-exilic writings focus essentially on two things: first, the rebuilding of the temple and, second, the way of holiness so that there is never again an exile from God. Since today is one of only two days in two years we will listen liturgically to Haggai, let’s ask the Holy Spirit who inspired him to help us to listen well to the message God wants us to get through him. The way we’re supposed to hear with ears to hear is to link what is said about rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem to Jesus’ resurrection (the True Temple), to the temple that is the Church, and to the temple that is meant to be each of us together with Jesus.
* In today’s passage from Haggai, we see how the Lord sent the prophet to wake up the people of God whom the Lord had freed from exile. It was happening during the time of King Darius, the son of Cyrus. As we’ve seen over the last three days from the Book of Ezra, Cyrus had allowed the Jews to return and helped them to start rebuilding the Temple and Darius refunded all of their sacrifices. But the Jews did not finish the job. They built something quickly and temporarily on the Temple Mount, but then started to prioritize their own affairs. They were saying, “The time has not yet come to rebuild the House of the Lord.” They were delaying the things of God for their own affairs, while constructing their own luxurious paneled houses. Haggai, speaking for the Lord said, “Is it time for you to dwell in your own paneled houses, while this house [of God] lies in ruins?” He then went on to say that they would never find fulfillment in sowing, eating, drinking, clothing, or money making. The forceful appeal of the Lord was “Consider your ways!” He told them to go get timber and begin to build the house of the Lord “that I may take pleasure in it and receive my glory.” That might seem like an egocentric statement, but it’s not. The Lord takes pleasure in loving us — we prayed in the Psalm, “The Lord takes delight in his people” — and his glory is, as St. Ireneus would say at the end of the second century, “man fully alive” through the vision of God. God wanted a house of God built so that we would fittingly worship him, because it is through such worship that he builds us into a holy temple. It starts, however, with proper zeal. Before the first temple was built, we saw in King David an opposite attitude to that of the post-exilic Jews. King David was eaten alive by the fact that he was living in a palace while the ark of the Covenant, the sign of God’s presence, was in a tent. He wanted to build a fitting temple, but God, through the prophet Nathan, replied that He instead would build a temple for David. That temple was obviously David’s own descendant according to the flesh and God’s own Son, Jesus. We’re all called, however, to have the same zeal to build a house of the Lord because that’s the way the L...

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for September 1, 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 in the United States. I’m here at the world’s most beautiful church, the Cathedral of Monreale in Palermo, Sicily. I’m looking at Jesus the Pantocrator, the  ruler of all, on top of me. Today in the Gospel for September 1st, Jesus speaks to us precisely  about how he has come into the world to proclaim the gospel to the poor. He was the Messiah  anointed literally by the Holy Spirit in order to carry out that precious work.
Today, September 1st  is Labor Day in the United States of America. And we think about Jesus’s work of the saving of the human race. We think of the work that built this most beautiful church dedicated to the Lord. We also think about the work that the Lord has given to each of us every day.
Today is a day in which we all draw close to the Holy Family of Nazareth to learn the gospel of work from St. Joseph, from  Our Lady, and from Jesus Christ himself, who took on a real human trade, so that we recognize  that as we’re doing something for the world, we’re also building up ourselves in virtue.  Today, let’s pray through the intercession of St. Joseph for all those who work hard, that we might come to work just like Jesus above me worked for our salvation so that we can experience the fruits of our work with him forever. God bless you.
 
 
The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based was:






GOSPEL
Luke 4:16-30
Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown up,
and went according to his custom
into the synagogue on the sabbath day.
He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah.
He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.
Rolling up the scroll,
he handed it back to the attendant and sat down,
and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him.
He said to them,
“Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
And all spoke highly of him
and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.
They also asked, “Is this not the son of Joseph?”
He said to them, “Surely you will quote me this proverb,
‘Physician, cure yourself,’ and say, ‘Do here in your native place
the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.'”
And he said,
“Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.
Indeed, I tell you,
there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah
when the sky was closed for three and a half years
and a severe famine spread over the entire land.
It was to none of these that Elijah was sent,
but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon.
Again, there were many lepers in Israel
during the time of Elisha the prophet;
yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”
When the people in the synagogue heard this,
they were all filled with fury.
They rose up, drove him out of the town,
and led him to the brow of the hill
on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong.

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
St. Bartholomew Church, Fort Worth, Texas
Day of Reflection for the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth Mission Council
September 20, 2025
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.20.25_Fort_Worth_Mission_Council_Part_II_1.mp3

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
St. Bartholomew Church, Fort Worth, Texas
Day of Reflection for the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth Mission Council
September 20, 2025
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.20.25_Fort_Worth_Mission_Council_Part_I_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry
National Assembly of the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious
Basilica of the Old Cathedral of St. Louis, Saint Louis, Missouri
Friday of the 24th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
September 19, 2025
1 Tim 6:2-12, Ps 49, Lk 8:1-3
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The following text guided the homily: 

* As we enter together more deeply in this National Assembly into the reality of our being pilgrims of hope and witnesses even now of the life of the world to come, and celebrate this special votive Mass for the Holy Year of Hope, we are providentially given today’s readings, which teach us three crucial lessons of this journey of hope together with Christ Jesus our hope (1 Tim 1:1).
* The first lesson is about the initial proclamation of hope that Christ came into the world to give. In today’s short Gospel, we see Jesus’ peripatetic preaching, journeying from one town to another preaching and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom. This was a snapshot of his ordinary life, what occupied most of his days. He was announcing the kingdom and inviting people to enter. In the midst of all of their sufferings, hardships and up-until-then centuries of unfilled hopes awaiting the Messiah, awaiting God’s saving interaction in history, he was proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God. He was helping them to see that Sacred Scripture was being fulfilled in their hearing, inviting them to strive to enter through the narrow gate, encouraging them to buy the treasure buried in a field and selling everything they have for the precious pearl of the kingdom. The Kingdom of God, as Pope Benedict loved to say, is God. It means that God is present and the ultimate criterion of life. And that God had taken our humanity and was journeying in their streets inviting them to come, follow him.
* The second lesson is that he wasn’t preaching and proclaiming the Gospel alone. He was accompanied first by those whom he had chosen to be with him so that he might then send them out (Mk 3:14). These twelve disciples whom he named and formed as apostles, he had already bestowed his power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases and had sent them to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick and they went out on their first missionary journey, journeying from village to village, proclaiming the good news and curing diseases everywhere. Today we see Jesus taking out these apostolic year novices on his own missionary journey.
* But they were not the only ones with Jesus. St. Luke adds a very important detail. He said that some women were accompanying Jesus and the apostles, women who had received Jesus’ healing power — they had “been cured of evil spirits and infirmities” — and wanted to spend their life, with faith and constancy, assisting him to heal others and raise them up. Three get named — Mary Magdalene, Joanna, the wife of Herod Antipas’ epitropos or money man Chuza, and Susanna — but Luke also says “and many others,” who “provided for them out of their resources.” They couldn’t preach; that was unheard of in Judaism and Jewish culture, but rather that lament what they couldn’t do, they were doing all they can to make possible, and share in, the preaching and proclamation of the Kingdom of God. These women were the ones who, to some degree, were making possible Jesus’ and the apostles’ preaching, so that Jesus everyday wouldn’t have to multiply loaves and fish, so that they wouldn’t have to appall the hypersensitive Scribes and the Pharisees by plucking heads of grain while walking through the fields. Like the widow with her two lepta placed in the Temple treasury,

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Assembly of the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious (CMSWR)
Drury Plaza Hotel St. Louis at the Arch
September 19, 2025
 
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9.19.25 Religious as Leaders of Hope according to the thought of Pope Leo

 

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious (CMSWR National Assembly)
Drury Plaza Hotel St. Louis at the Arch
September 18, 2025
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9.18.25 Religious as Pilgrims and Living Signs of Hope for the Pilgrim Church on Earth