Verse of the day: Matthew 28:18-20

"Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”"

The last words of Matthew’s Gospel are not a farewell but a commissioning. The One who has just conquered death does not retreat into heaven; he steps toward his frightened friends and says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” That single sentence changes everything. Because the universe now belongs to Jesus, the Church may go. The “therefore” is the hinge of history: authority received becomes authority shared.

We are not sent as independent operators but as baptizers and teachers. Baptism in the triune Name plunges people into the very life of God—Father, Son, and Spirit—while teaching them “to obey everything I have commanded you” forms a people who actually live that life. Conversion is only the beginning; discipleship is the long, costly apprenticeship of love. And over it all hangs the promise that still steadies trembling hearts: “I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Presence, not merely power, is the gift.

The manuscript illustration I imagine tries to hold these truths together in gold and pigment. Christ stands inside a mandorla of burnished gold, the orb of the world in his left hand, his right raised in the ancient gesture of blessing. The gold is not decoration; it is theology. It says that the One who sends us already fills every place we will ever go. Around him the Eleven receive their charge; their varied robes hint at the nations they will reach. In the lower register a baptismal font gleams, water catching the same gold light that streams from Christ—an image of the Trinity’s name being spoken over every people. Nearby a teacher unrolls a scroll; the words are not merely heard but obeyed, the living tradition passed from hand to hand. Tiny ships and city gates in the borders remind us that “all nations” is not an abstraction but streets, languages, and tables still waiting.

When we look at such an image we are meant to see ourselves. The same authority that once rested on eleven exhausted men now rests on us. The same water, the same teaching, the same unfailing Companion. The age has not ended. The sending has not been revoked. Go, therefore. He is already there.




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