On the Solemnity of the Annunciation, March 25, 2025, Monsignor Roger Landry, National Director of The Pontifical Mission Societies USA, delivered a powerful homily at the Basilica of St. Louis, King of France—the “Old Cathedral”—during the Midwest Regional Meeting of The Pontifical Mission Societies. “The Church’s mission work,” he emphasized, “is ultimately to bring Christ to people.”
This historic church, the first cathedral west of the Mississippi River, served as both a launching pad and sacred respite for some of the greatest missionaries in American Catholic history, including Father Pierre De Smet. Its walls echoed with renewed purpose as delegates from across the Midwest gathered in prayer and unity.
Representatives from the Archdioceses of Chicago, Indianapolis, Kansas City in Kansas, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Minneapolis, and St. Louis were present, along with delegates from the Dioceses of Belleville, Springfield, and Joliet in Illinois; Grand Rapids and Saginaw in Michigan; Duluth in Minnesota; Jefferson City, Kansas City-St. Joseph, and Springfield-Cape Girardeau in Missouri; Lincoln in Nebraska; Cleveland and Youngstown in Ohio; and La Crosse in Wisconsin.
Monsignor Landry began by thanking Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski of St. Louis, Bishop Mark Rivituso, and Father Nick Smith, rector of the Basilica, for their warm welcome. He reminded those in attendance that the very construction of this fourth church on the site was made possible thanks to funds from the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, just twelve years after its founding in France. “This Church,” he said, “is deeply embedded in the history of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith.”
Preaching on the mystery of the Incarnation, Monsignor Landry reflected on the verse inscribed on the church’s façade: Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and He will dwell with them (Rev 21:3). “The definitive place of God with the human race is Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, God-with-us,” he said. “He tabernacled himself in our human nature within the womb of the Blessed Virgin, and he continues to tabernacle himself among us in the Eucharist.”
Monsignor Roger Landry, first on the left, processes into the Basilica of St. Louis, King of France (Old Cathedral), in St. Louis, Missouri, during a TPMS Midwest Regional Meeting on March 25, 2025, Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord.
“The Solemnity of the Annunciation contains great lessons for us as baptized missionary disciples in communion entrusted by the Church with fostering the zealous continuation of Jesus’ mission bringing him, his words, and his invitation to a life of communion with him and with us to the ends of the earth,” he said. “These are the three great lessons contained in the prayer of the Angelus, which the Church prays each day to actualize the mystery of the Incarnation we solemnly celebrate today.”
The Angelus, Monsignor Landry said, holds within it three essential lessons for missionary disciples. Reflecting on the first verse—The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary—he described Gabriel as the “arch-missionary,” sent to proclaim joy and announce God’s nearness. “Every missionary is a spiritual descendant of the Archangel Gabriel,” he said, “sent out to remind specific persons in specific places that they are not anonymous biological happenings, but willed by God, called by God, and commissioned by God to be filled with his life.”
The second lesson, he said, comes from Mary’s response: Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word. “This is the type of faith that each Christian is meant to show to our own having been chosen by God to be his follower and missionary,” Landry preached. “Each of us, having been filled with this grace, having been overshadowed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and confirmation, is called humbly to say that we are the servants of the Lord and our great desire is not to do our will but his.”
But it was the third part of the Angelus—And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us—that became the heart of the homily. “The Church’s mission work,” he emphasized, “is ultimately to bring Christ to people, not just his saving message and teachings. It’s to build Churches—not just buildings but missionary-disciples-in-communion.”
He reminded those present that the mystery of the Incarnation is not a past event but a living reality: “The summit of salvation history is not the Incarnation we celebrate today, nor even his Passion, Death, and Resurrection. It’s the mystery of the Holy Eucharist—because what happened in Mary can, by analogy, be perpetuated in us.”
Citing Pope Francis’ Evangelii Gaudium, he described the missionary kerygma in personal terms: “Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen, and free you.”
As the diocesan representatives of The Pontifical Mission Societies prepared to profess their faith in the Nicene Creed, Monsignor Landry concluded: “When we pray the awesome words that point to today’s feast—‘For us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man’—we will kneel together, just as we do before the consecration. This is how he extends what happened in Nazareth to St. Louis and beyond. And like Mary, we too are called to say ‘yes,’ to become tabernacles of Christ in a world longing for his presence.”
