National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies

Daily Reflection for August 9, 2025

I’m Monsignor Roger Landry, National Director of  the Pontifical Mission Societies. It’s August 9th.  I’m recording this at the North American College  in Rome, the place where American seminarians are sent in order to prepare to be sent home  to serve us in the United States as priests.

Today in the Gospel there’s a scene in which a  dad exasperated comes up to Jesus and asks him to exorcize his son who was constantly attempting  to commit suicide by running into fire or drowning himself. The father had already brought his son  to the nine apostles who weren’t with Jesus at the transfiguration but they weren’t able to expunge  the demon. And so Jesus somewhat exasperated said,  “Oh faithless and perverse generation, bring  him to me.” And Jesus worked that exorcism.

After he said to the disciples that  they weren’t able to work that miraculous deed because their faith was too little. He said  if we have faith the size of a mustard seed we can transplant mountain ranges into the sea.  Jesus was using very graphic language there, but the real question is, what’s the level of our  faith? Do we have faith? In St. Mark’s version of the scene he said some demons are cast out only  by prayer and fasting. To have faith to pray as if lives depend on it because they do. To have faith  to pray in the body, which is what fasting is, hungering for what God hungers way beyond our own  material needs.

Someone who had this type of faith is the great saint the church celebrates  today. St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, known in life as St. Edith Stein. She was a  Jewish convert who reading St. Teresa of Ávila’s life recognized this is the truth and wanted to  enter into the true relationship with that truth with a personal name, Jesus. She gave her life  with her sister Rosa in the concentration camp during World War II when the Nazis rounded her  up in response to the heroic statement of the Dutch bishops against Nazism. She said,  “We are going to suffer for our people.” She knew that she was continuing to make up in her own flesh what was lacking in her of Christ’s sufferings for the sake of the Church. She was a  bride on the cross together with Jesus.

Through her intercession, we pray for all missionaries  that their faith may be great, and for the whole Church that our faith might sustain them so that  together we can move the mountains of disbelief and bring everybody one day to the heavenly  Jerusalem, the celestial mountain where Jesus

awaits us together with St. Teresa Benedicta  of the Cross and all the saints. God bless you.

Gospel

Matthew 17:14-20

“Lord, have pity on my son, who is a lunatic and suffers severely;

often he falls into fire, and often into water.

I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.”

Jesus said in reply,

“O faithless and perverse generation, how long will I be with you?

How long will I endure you?

Bring the boy here to me.”

Jesus rebuked him and the demon came out of him,

and from that hour the boy was cured.

Then the disciples approached Jesus in private and said,

“Why could we not drive it out?”

He said to them, “Because of your little faith.

Amen, I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed,

you will say to this mountain,

‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move.

Nothing will be impossible for you.”