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Seven Reasons Why
There is something special about when the Church celebrates solemnities. Christmas is tangible. Good Friday is emotional. Easter is triumphant. The Ascension is … is … to be honest it can sound like Jesus simply “going away.” It is easy to hear it as a kind of spiritual farewell: Jesus finished his work, returned to heaven, and now we wait until we join him someday. But the Church celebrates the Ascension as a central moment of the Paschal Mystery because it tells us something essential about Christ, about ourselves, and about the meaning of daily life right now.
Often I give three reasons why things should matter, but it is a solemnity, so seven seems like a good number to explain why the Ascension still matters deeply in 2026.
1. The Ascension means humanity now has a place in the life of God
The Ascension is not Jesus escaping the world. It is humanity entering into the glory of God. The risen Jesus ascends with his human nature still united to him. The wounds remain. The Incarnation is permanent. Human life, our humanity, is now taken into the communion of the Trinity. That means heaven is no longer merely a distant spiritual realm. In Christ, human life itself has been brought into the heart of God.This matters because many people today experience life as fragile, disposable, or meaningless. The Ascension proclaims the opposite:
- human life matters eternally,
- the body matters,
- history matters,
- our struggles and sufferings matter.
Our destiny is not annihilation or absorption into nothingness. Our destiny is communion with God.
2. Christ is not absent. He is present differently
One of the misunderstandings about the Ascension is the idea that Jesus “left.” But in the New Testament, the Ascension is not about absence. It is about a new mode of presence. Before the Ascension, Jesus was physically present in one place at a time. After the Ascension and the gift of the Spirit, Christ becomes present to the whole Church across the world and through time: in the Eucharist, in Scripture, in prayer, in the poor, in the gathered Church, and through the Holy Spirit to mention a few. The Ascension prepares for Pentecost. Christ does not abandon the Church; he fills it with his own life. For everyday life, this means Christianity is not merely remembering someone from the past. Christ is alive and active now.
3. The Ascension gives meaning to ordinary earthly life
The Ascension does not tell Christians to ignore the world while waiting for heaven. In fact, the opposite is true. Just before ascending, Jesus sends the disciples on mission: “You will be my witnesses.” The disciples do not stand staring at the sky forever. They return to Jerusalem and begin the life of the Church. The Ascension teaches that holiness is lived in ordinary human life: work, family, service, relationships, acts of justice and mercy, and daily faithfulness. Christ reigns not apart from human life, but over it. Therefore ordinary life becomes the place where discipleship happens.
In 2026, many people feel caught between anxiety, division, exhaustion, distraction, and uncertainty about the future. The Ascension reminds Christians that history still belongs to God and that faithful daily living still matters.
4. The Ascension changes how we understand power
In the world, power is often measured by dominance, wealth, visibility, popularity, projection of power or control. But the Ascended Christ still bears the wounds of crucifixion. The one seated at the right hand of the Father is the same one who washed feet, forgave sinners, welcomed the marginalized, and suffered on the Cross. The Ascension reveals that sacrificial love is not failure. It is the deepest form of glory. This matters because modern culture often rewards self-promotion and strength without compassion. The Ascension proclaims that humility, mercy, truth, and love participate in the reign of Christ.
5. The Ascension says we already live between earth and heaven
The Ascension creates a tension at the center of Christian life. We still live in the world with all its beauty and pain: wars continue, people suffer, injustice persists, and death remains real. Yet Christ is risen and glorified. Christians therefore live with hope without denying reality. The Ascension teaches us to live with our feet firmly on earth while our hearts remain anchored in God. This prevents two extremes: despair, as if evil has the final word, or escapism, as if earthly life does not matter. The Christian lives in hope-filled engagement with the world.
6. The Ascension means the Church has responsibility now
After the Ascension, the disciples cannot simply wait passively. The Church becomes the visible sign of Christ’s presence in the world. This means Christians are called to continue Christ’s work: feeding the hungry, defending human dignity, forgiving, proclaiming the Gospel, building peace, caring for the vulnerable, and living as witnesses to hope. The Ascension is therefore not the end of Christ’s mission but the beginning of the Church’s participation in it.
7. The Ascension reminds us where history is going
Modern life often feels fragmented and directionless. Many people experience history as chaos with no larger meaning. The Ascension says history has a destination. The final word over humanity is not violence, death, fear, or division, but the reign of the risen Christ. This does not remove suffering from the present moment, but it changes how Christians endure it. Hope becomes possible because Christ has gone before us.
A bonus spiritual insight
The disciples at the Ascension stand between memory and mission: They remember what Jesus has done but they are also sent forward into the future. That remains the Christian condition today. The Ascension invites believers not to stare upward waiting to escape the world, but to live differently within it – with hope instead of despair, courage instead of fear, purpose instead of aimlessness, and love rooted in the living presence of Christ.
The Ascension is not simply about where Jesus went. It is about what we are called to become.
Image credit: Jesus’ ascension to Heaven depicted by John Singleton Copley in Ascension (1775) Public Domain
Lightning
Now at the cusp of the Stanley Cup Finals, you might think this is going to be an article about my beloved Tampa Bay Lightning. Were that it was, but alas the Lightning lost in the first round to the Montreal Canadians. No worries. I have a backup team: Carolina Hurricanes. I trust you see the weather connection from my home state, Florida. Tampa is “the lightning capital of the world” and the State is often the target of tropical storms and hurricanes.
But this musing is about the natural phenomena, lightning. Take a moment to ponder what causes lightning. Do you remember the basic explanation we learned as young inquiring minds? If my memory serves me, after a discussion about Benjamin Franklin’s kite experiment, we were offered an explanation similar to the basic one still offered today.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), lightning is a massive burst of static electricity caused by the separation of positive and negative charges within a storm cloud. As updrafts and downdrafts crash ice and water particles together, negative charges build up at the bottom of the cloud and positive charges gather at the top. When the charge becomes strong enough to overcome the air’s natural insulation, it releases a spectacular electrical discharge. That matches up with what I remember from elementary school science and memories of Van de Graaff generators – a device that causes the accumulation of very high-voltage, low-current electricity on a hollow metal globe. When the charge reaches a critical level lightning bolts emerge in a mesmerizing display.
But lightning, it seems, is far more interesting.
NASA’s Wind Satellite is a space-based laboratory for long-term solar wind measurements. It monitors solar flares that shoot out from the sun allowing scientists to analyze the particles that stream from the sun’s surface. It is a phenomenon not that dissimilar from lightning, or so it seemed to scientists living in lightning-rich areas of the world… such as Florida and other locales across the globe. By the way, it is estimated that there are 2,000 lightning strikes per hour each day across the planet. There’s a lot to study.
The Wind Satellite results pointed to an avenue of research that said there was more going on than just separating positive and negative charges like a planetary Van de Graaff generator. Astrophysicists began to take their space-focused instrument built to study violent cosmic events and began to use them to study thunderstorms and lightning. These new studies have recorded X-rays emanating from lightning and flickering patterns of gamma rays resident in thunderclouds. The scientific world began to question if lightning was more than super-sized electrostatic sparks. Electricity has a role to be sure, but the question was what was the spark that initiated the spark that initiated the lightning. Typical thunderstorms have just a tenth the electric juice needed to spark, and the strongest fields ever measured reach just a third of the critical intensity. It turns out that the entire physics toolbox might have a role – from particle physics to cosmic events such as supernovas and black holes.
The basic idea is that an electron in the storm cloud collides with an atom amidst an already underway stream of atoms in what might be termed an avalanche, The electron ricochets and emits a gamma ray. That gamma ray transforms into an electron and its antimatter twin, a positron. The cloud’s electric field would push the positron backward close to where the avalanche began. There it could crash into another atom, setting off another avalanche, which would make more gamma rays, more positrons, more avalanches, and so on, until you get lightning.
Of course that just leads one to ask, why the avalanche in the first place. There are several competing theories, I am partial to the one that speculates (based on solid field research) that cosmic-ray showers are the initiator. “These showers are the end result of violent events in deep space, such as the expulsion of particles from feeding black holes or stellar explosions that fire off a piece of atomic shrapnel. Perhaps a proton from an exploding star, or a denuded iron atom expelled from a supermassive black hole. After their cosmic travel across the universe, they slam into Earth’s atmosphere.” [Wood] The violent collision sprays a jet of electrons, positrons, and other particles down into a cloud with enough energy that the resulting electrons and positrons could have enough kinetic energy to separate the electrons from their molecules and get an avalanche going, even if the electric field stays well below the critical threshold.
Ancient civilizations thought lightning was an indication of warfare among the gods. In a way they weren’t all together wrong. Lightning may well be an indication of cosmological events “way up there” millions of light years away.
As for the Tampa Bay Lightning…. there is always next year.
Source credit: What Causes Lightning, Quanta Magazine, Charlie Wood, May 2026.
Image credit: murat4art | iStock photo ID:2274303724 | downloaded May 16 2026 | standard iStock licensing
Christmas and Ascension – Life Lessons
Fr. Antony Kadavil, in a 2019 post from Vatican News, wrote: “The Ascension is most closely related, in meaning, to Christmas. In Jesus, the human and the Divine become united in the Person and life of one man. That’s Christmas. At the Ascension, this human being – the person and the resurrected body of Jesus – became for all eternity a part of who God is. It was not the Spirit of Jesus or the Divine Nature of Jesus that ascended to the Father. It was the Risen living Body of Jesus: a Body that the disciples had touched, a Body in which He Himself had eaten and drunk with them both before and after His Resurrection, a real, physical, but gloriously restored Body, bearing the marks of nails and a spear. This is what, and Who, ascended. This is what, now and forever, is a living, participating part of God. That is what the Ascension, along with the Incarnation, is here to tell us – that it is a good thing to be a human being; indeed it is a wonderful and an important and a holy thing to be a human being. It is such an important thing that God did it. Even more, the fullness of God now includes what it means to be a human being.”
Fr. Kadavil went on to offer “life messages” from the gospel of the Ascension:
1) We need to be proclaimers and evangelizers: In today’s Gospel, Jesus gives this mission to all the believers: “Go out to the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” This mission is not given to a select few but to all believers. To be a Christian is to be a proclaimer and an evangelizer. There is a difference between preaching and proclaiming. “We preach with words but we proclaim with our lives.” As we celebrate the Lord’s return to His Father in Heaven – His Ascension — we are being commissioned to go forth and proclaim the Gospel of life and love, of hope and peace, by the witness of our lives. On this day of hope, encouragement and commissioning, let us renew our commitment to be true disciples everywhere we go, beginning with our family and our parish, “living in a manner worthy of the call [we] have received.”
2) We need to live a life of Christian joy in the presence of the ascended Lord. According to Luke, the disciples “returned to Jerusalem with great joy.” Apparently Jesus’ exaltation and final blessing gave them, as it gives us, the assurance that, though absent, Jesus is still present, present even in the pain and sorrow we undergo. That is why St. Augustine assures us, “Christ is now exalted above the Heavens, but he still suffers on earth all the pain that we, the members of his Body, have to bear. He showed this when he cried out from above: ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?’ and when he said: ‘I was hungry and you gave me food.’ While in Heaven he is also with us; and while on earth we are with him. He is here with us by his Divinity, his power and his love. We cannot be in Heaven, as he is on earth, by divinity, but in him, we can be there by love.”
3) We have a teaching mission: Jesus taught us lessons of Faith, Hope, forgiveness, mercy, redemption and Love. We cannot put these lessons on a shelf and ignore them. They stand before us in the person of Jesus. Although no longer visibly present in the world, Jesus is present in his words., and we must make these words real in our lives as well as in the lives of others. Christianity was meant to be a Faith in which Jesus’ followers would help and care for others, just as Jesus had done. But the spreading of the Good News to all nations is not a goal that can be attained by human might and craft. This is why Jesus promises to empower the Church with His abiding presence and that of the Holy Spirit. The challenge of sharing the Good News with all mankind should, therefore, begin with our admission that we have often been arrogant and overbearing. We must learn to be humble and let the Holy Spirit lead the way.
4) The ascended Jesus is our source of strength and encouragement: Perhaps some of the nagging doubts which inevitably accompany the journey of Faith could be lessened by our meditating on the Ascension and its implications. When we are too far from Faith to pray on our own, let us remember that we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the Righteous, praying for us. When the trials of life feel too heavy to bear, we must remember that Christ will come again in glory, the same glory in which Jesus arose from the tomb, the same glory to which Jesus ascended, and the same glory in which Jesus currently abides. Though our limited perception might find him absent, Jesus is fully present, participating in every moment of our lives. By His Ascension, Christ has not deserted us but has made it possible for the Holy Spirit to enter all times and places. In this way it is possible for each of us to be transformed by the power of the Spirit into agents or instruments of Christ. We become enlivened, and our actions become animated in a new way by the Spirit of the God we love and serve. We have become other Christs in the world. (Fr. Antony Kadavil)
Image credit: Jesus’ ascension to Heaven depicted by John Singleton Copley in Ascension (1775) Public Domain
Whatever we ask
In today’s gospel we read: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you.” (John 16:23). It seemed like a “blank check” for our prayers and the intercession of Jesus. What is the context, what are the limits, and are there any caveats? Continue reading
Universal Mandate
19 Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” One should be struck by the repetition of the word “all” in this passage:
- Jesus has been given all power (v.18).
- Disciples are to be made of all nations (v.19).
- Disciples are to obey all that Jesus commanded (v.20).
- Jesus will be with the disciples always (literally “all the days”; v.20).
The universality of Jesus’ power and his continuing presence provide the dynamic for the universal discipleship mandate. The disciples will be able to make disciples of all the nations only as they recognize that Jesus has been given all authority and that he will be with them all the days until the end. The universal task is daunting, but it can be done because of the continuing power and presence of Jesus.
Baptizing and teaching (v. 20) are the constituent actions within the larger command to make disciples. Baptizing has been mentioned in this Gospel only as the activity of John, though the Fourth Gospel makes it clear that it was a characteristic also of Jesus’ ministry at least in the early days while John was still active (John 3:22–26; 4:1–3). It was against the background of John’s practice that it would be understood, as an act of repentance and of identification with the purified and prepared people of God (3:6, 9, 13). But while John’s baptism was only a preparatory one (3:11), Jesus now institutes one with a fuller meaning. It is a commitment to (in the name is literally ‘into the name’, implying entrance into an allegiance) the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (all three of whom, interestingly, were involved in the event of Jesus’ own baptism, 3:16–17). Jesus thus takes his place along with his Father and the Spirit as the object of worship and of the disciple’s commitment. The experience of God in these three Persons is the essential basis of discipleship. At the same time the singular noun name (not ‘names’) underlines the unity of the three Persons.
Jesus alone had been the teacher, and the verb has not been used by Matthew of his disciples’ ministry. Now they take over his role of teaching, which is the necessary application of his ‘authority’ (v. 18). They are to teach not just abstract ideas, but to observe all that I have commanded you, the latter verb being from the same root as the noun for ‘commandments’ in 5:19; 15:3; etc. (and cf. the same verb in 15:4; 19:7). There is thus a strongly ethical emphasis in this summary of Christian mission and discipleship, as there has been in Jesus’ teaching throughout this Gospel. To ‘make disciples’ is not complete unless it leads them to a life of observing Jesus’ commandments.
Jesus’ universal reign demands a universal mission. The restriction of the disciples’ mission to Israel alone in 10:5–6 can now be lifted, for the kingdom of the Son of man as described in Daniel 7:14 requires disciples of all nations. Ethnē (‘nations’) is the regular Greek term for Gentiles, and it has been argued that this command therefore actually excludes the Jews from the scope of the disciples’ mission. But to send the disciples to ‘the Gentiles’ is merely to extend the range of their mission, and need not imply a cessation of the mission to Israel which has already been commanded, and can now be taken for granted. Moreover, the phrase panta ta ethnē (‘all nations’) has been used previously in 24:9, 14; 25:32 in contexts which include Israel in ‘the nations’. And surely there can be no suggestion in Daniel 7:14 of the exclusion of Israel from the dominion of the Son of man, who himself represents Israel. This then is the culmination of the theme we have noted throughout the Gospel, the calling of a people of God far wider than that of the Old Testament, in which membership is based not on race but on a relationship with God through his Messiah (3:9; 8:11–12; 12:21; 21:28–32, 41–43; 22:8–10; 24:14, 31; 26:13).
Image credit: Jesus’ ascension to Heaven depicted by John Singleton Copley in Ascension (1775) Public Domain
St. Matthias
According to the Acts of the Apostles, chosen by God through the apostles to replace Judas Iscariot following the latter’s betrayal of Jesus and his subsequent death. His calling as an apostle is unique, in that his appointment was not made personally by Jesus (who had already ascended into heaven), and it came before the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the early Church.
There is no mention of a Matthias among the lists of disciples or followers of Jesus in the three synoptic gospels, but according to Acts, he had been with Jesus from his baptism by John the Baptist until Jesus’ Ascension. In the days following, Peter proposed that the assembled disciples, who numbered about 120, nominate two men to replace Judas.
So they proposed two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus, and Matthias. Then they prayed, “You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this apostolic ministry from which Judas turned away to go to his own place.” Then they gave lots to them, and the lot fell upon Matthias, and he was counted with the eleven apostles.”(Acts 1:24-25)
No further information about Matthias is to be found in the canonical New Testament.
All information concerning the ministry and death of Matthias is vague and contradictory. The tradition of the Greeks says that St. Matthias spread Christianity around Cappadocia and on the coasts of the Caspian Sea. According to the historian Nicephorus, Matthias first preached the Gospel in Judaea, then what is modern-day Georgia. There he was crucified. A book known as the Coptic Acts of Andrew and Matthias, places his activity similarly in the modern Georgian region of Adjara where Matthias is buried.
Another tradition maintains that Matthias was stoned at Jerusalem by the local populace, and then was beheaded. According to Hippolytus of Rome, Matthias died of old age in Jerusalem.
Doubt and Hesitation
This coming Sunday is the Solemnity of the Ascension. When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted. Many English translations offer “but some doubted.” Unfortunately the word “some” does not appear in the Greek text. The only two valid translations are “they worshiped, but they doubted (hesitated)” or “they worshiped and they doubted (hesitated).” It is hard to avoid the simple statement of the text: those who worship are also those who doubt.
Mark Allan Powell writes about this verse in his book, Loving Jesus [121].
… I want to note that the word some is not actually found in the Greek Bible. Why is it in the English version? Well, Matthew uses a particular construction here that allows translators to think that the word some could be implied. He also uses that construction in seventeen other instances, though no one ever seems to think the word is implied in those cases. It could be implied here, but why would it be? I asked a Bible translator that question one time and got the following response: “The verse wouldn’t make sense otherwise. No one can worship and doubt at the same time.” I invited this fellow to visit a Lutheran church. We do it all the time.
However, this verse is understood, it illustrates that the separation of the wheat and weeds has not yet occurred (13:39, 40). Both worshipers and doubters are present in the community and/or in individuals.
It is also to be noted that whether worshipers and doubters are two groups of people, or a description of the whole group, Jesus gives the Great Commission to them all – to the worshipers and doubters alike.
The word translated “doubt” (distazo) is a verbal form of dis = twice, double. It is not “disbelieving” (apisteuo) so much as wavering between two (or more) strong possibilities. We might say, “to have second thoughts.” Its only other occurrence in the NT is Mt 14:31, where Jesus after saving Peter from sinking, criticizes him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” Peter, seeing Jesus and himself walk on water, knows that it is possible to do that; but Peter also knows the strong possibility that people sink in water. He wavers. He walks on water and he sinks into the water. After they get into the boat, the wind ceases, and then 14:33 states: “And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’“ (The Greek for “worship” in 14:33 is the same word in 28:17). The two times that the disciples doubt Jesus, they also worship him.
Powell [123]writes more about this:
I think that worship is the essence of spirituality. But worship … can sometimes be superficial. In Matthew 15, Jesus tells the Pharisees that they worship God with their lips while their hearts are far from God. The Pharisees, of course, are often the fall guys in this Gospel and they seem to stay in trouble the whole time. Still, say what you will about the Pharisees — the one thing they never do is doubt. They are always certain about everything. They are the “God said it, I believe it, that settles it” people of the Bible. It never occurs to them that they might have overlooked something or misunderstood something. As a result, they are often wrong, but they are never in doubt.
By contrast, disciples of Jesus worship and doubt at the same time — and Jesus doesn’t call their worship superficial. It might be going too far to say that doubt is a good thing, but I do note that Jesus never rebukes anyone for it. I am tempted to believe that, just as fear seasons joy, so doubt seasons worship. Joy without fear becomes shallow, and worship without doubt can be self-assured and superficial. Fear and doubt are not good things in themselves, but they do keep us grounded in reality.
Eugene Boring (502-3) says this about the verse: “Whatever the nature of the resurrection event, it did not generate perfect faith even in those who experienced it firsthand. It is not to angels or perfect believers, but to the worshiping/wavering community of disciples to whom the world mission is entrusted.” We are commissioned even if we don’t fully comprehend the doctrine of the Trinity or if we are unable to understand the Creed or even if we waver in our own faith.
We should note that in response to their ‘doubt/hesitation’ Jesus came and spoke to them in reassurance (just as he did in 17:7, the only other place where Matthew uses the verb ‘come’ of Jesus).
Image credit: Jesus’ ascension to Heaven depicted by John Singleton Copley in Ascension (1775) Public Domain
Planting Seeds
The account of St. Paul’s address on the Areopagus in Athens is a masterclass in the evangelization of the culture – a skill surely important for our day and age. His arrival in Athens is, in its way, the introduction of Christianity to Europe. It was an event, while of no particular note or importance to historians, thoughts leaders, or philosophers of the day, was one that shaped the history of Western Europe and eventually the world.
After spending time in Asia Minor, Paul went to Athens, arguably the most important cultural center of the ancient Roman world. Upon arriving, as was his practice, Paul went to the synagogue where he could easily connect the Good News to a shared foundation of their common Jewish heritage. There his goal was to announce Jesus as the climax of the story of Israel.
But he did not limit his delivery of the Good News to those already part of the Chosen People. He went daily in the public square with whoever happened to be there. Even some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers engaged him in discussion.” (Acts 17:17-18)
When he arrives at the Areopagus—a rocky outcropping just below the Parthenon—Paul used a rhetorical device, captatio benevolentiae (capturing the good will of one’s audience), Paul compliments them: “You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious.” (v.22) Just as in the synagogue, Paul works to build upon a foundation already there: “For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, ‘To an Unknown God.’” (v.23) Then Paul moves on to complete the story and make known to the Athenians, “The God who made the world and all that is in it, the Lord of heaven and earth.” (v.24)
It is an important masterclass in Evangelization: there were seeds of the Word in Athenian culture, alongside idolatrous practices, esoteric philosophies and variant theologies. As in our day. St. Paul is not simply “open” to the culture or quickly adopts the combative stance of the cultural warrior. He starts on a foundation upon which both can agree.
That day, only a few accepted his testimony, but the seeds were planted. St. Paul might not have been successful, but he was faithful to the opportunity. And he left the increase of believers to God. It is a lesson in humility and faithfulness.
Image credit: Paul preaching in the Areopagus, 1729-31 by Sir James Thornhill, Public Domain – from an original preparatory drawing by Raphael of Paul preaching in the Areopagus.
The Eleven
This coming Sunday is the Solemnity of the Ascension. Jesus was from Galilee and since the beginning of his public ministry had moved from the northernmost reaches of Israel to its center in Jerusalem – the locus of the confrontation and rejection by the leaders of Israel. But now the “Galilean” has triumphed against all odds and in a manner none had foreseen. The preparation of the “twelve” was not lost in their abandoning Jesus at the Passion. They are now restored to their positions of trust and responsibility and given final instructions for fulfilling the mission to which they had already been called (cf. 10:1-15) – but the scope is now far wider than Israel and included all the nations: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19)
The baptism which John had originally instituted as a symbol of a new beginning for repentant Israel (3:1-12) is now to be extended to all peoples of the earth. At the heart of this new community of faith is the risen Jesus himself, as he said he would be (18:20). The new community will consist of his disciples who keep his commandments and are sustained by Jesus’ abiding presence among them. The abiding presence of the one who holds all power in heaven and on earth – a power greater than that offered by Satan in the desert (4:8-10)
After Matthew’s emphasis on the fate of Judas (27:3–10) it is appropriate that he now describes the ‘inner circle’ as the eleven disciples. While some scholars argue that more disciples were present, it seems to me that their arguments are to ensure that the commission and promises of vv.18-20 were given to more than the “eleven” – an argument constructed to “head off” any later succession arguments about who is to direct the early mission. To accept that only the eleven were present does not, of course, require us to believe that the commission and the promise of vv. 18–20 applied only to them; here, as often, they represent the whole body of Jesus.
Image credit: Jesus’ ascension to Heaven depicted by John Singleton Copley in Ascension (1775) Public Domain
Galilee
This coming Sunday is the Solemnity of the Ascension. In the Gospel according to Matthew, this is the first scene in which disciples have appeared since they fled during the arrest of Jesus (26:56). Since that point in the narrative, Jesus has been crucified, died and laid to rest in the tomb. In the verses just before our text (Mt 28:7 and 10), the tomb has been just found empty by the faithful women who reported that an angel of the Lord and Jesus himself has appeared with a message for the “eleven disciples:” “Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.” (v.10)
Presumably the disciples are following the message of Jesus, delivered by the women, to meet Jesus in Galilee. Thus, the disciples are not acting based on their own witness to the risen Christ, but upon the testimony of others. It is by that witness that the disciples take their next step on the journey of faith. Thus, there is already a nascent belief in the Resurrection, even if they do not yet fully comprehend the implications and consequences of that salvific act.
That sets the immediate context of our passage. But there is a larger context in play. R.T. France [1987, 417] writes that these final verses of Matthew 28 serve to complete the framework of the entire Gospel.
First, v. 18 presents Jesus as the universal sovereign. In 1:1–17 he was presented as the successor to royal dignity, and 2:1–12 portrayed him as the true ‘king of the Jews’. So in due course he entered Jerusalem as her king (21:1–11), but it is this very claim which has brought him to the cross, where it was mockingly displayed (27:37). But now the promise of chs. 1–2 is proved true after all, and on a far wider scale than a merely Jewish kingship, in ‘the enthronement of the Son of Man,’ whose rule is over ‘all nations’ (v. 19), indeed over both heaven and earth (v. 18). Secondly, and still more wonderfully, 1:23 presented Jesus the baby under the name ‘God with us’; now in the final verse Jesus the risen Lord confirms the promise, ‘I am with you always.’
Each of their essential points combine for an overarching consequence for the believer: universal kingship and accompaniment until the end of the age, means that there is a universal and timeless element to mission. We are a people sent into the world to proclaim the Good News.
Image credit: Jesus’ ascension to Heaven depicted by John Singleton Copley in Ascension (1775) Public Domain
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