Movement Five: Sending · Matthew 28:16-20; Acts 1:1-11; John 20:19-23
Discover that all three sending texts hand over the same three things, an authority that is not ours, a task, and a presence; that the commission was given to a group St. Matthew says was worshiping and doubting at the same moment; and that among the last instructions before the Ascension was one to wait.
The Church exists in order to evangelize; that is her deepest identity. The commission names both sacrament and teaching, the power promised is the Holy Spirit rather than technique, and the presence promised has no end date.
Plan it differently. The teaching load is lighter than usual because almost nothing new is being introduced. What this session does is gather thirteen weeks and send people out of the room with something to keep doing.
The Commissioning section near the end is not optional and it is not a closing prayer. Protect twelve minutes for it.
Matthew 28:17: "And when they saw him they worshiped him; but some doubted."
The verb is distazō, used only twice in the New Testament, here and at Matthew 14:31, where Jesus asks Peter why he doubted after pulling him out of the water. It carries the sense of wavering or hesitating rather than settled disbelief.
Be honest with the group about the Greek: the phrase can be read as "some of them doubted" or as "they hesitated," and translations differ. RSV2CE reads "but some doubted." Either way the fact stands, and it is the most encouraging sentence in the passage. The Great Commission was handed to a group that was, at that moment, partly wavering. Nobody in your room has to have finished doubting first.
Verse 18 first: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." The commission is grounded on his authority, not on the competence of the eleven. And notice that it is spoken of as given: the Father gives universal messianic authority to the incarnate Son within the economy of salvation, which says nothing against the Son’s eternal equality with the Father.
Then the grammar of verses 19 and 20, which is worth being precise about. There is one main imperative: make disciples (mathēteusate). "Going," "baptizing," and "teaching" are participles hanging off it. The single command is make disciples, and the rest describes how it is done.
And what it is done with: baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. Sacrament and catechesis, named together, exactly as Sessions 7 and 11 found them. Not a selection of the commandments either: all of them.
"And lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age." Meth’ hymōn eimi, I am with you.
Set the three passages side by side. In Mark 3:14 the Twelve were appointed to be with him, and to be sent out. In Mark 5:18 the healed man begged to be with him, and was refused and sent home. And here, at the sending, Jesus says I am with you, always.
The being with is not the thing you give up in order to be sent. It is what the sending is made of, and in the end he supplies it rather than us securing it. Get this out of the group in Build 4 rather than announcing it. It is the last movement of the study.
Verse 1: "In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach." St. Luke calls his entire Gospel the beginning. Acts is what Jesus continued to do, through the Church.
Verse 4: he charged them not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father. After three years of formation, a crucifixion, and a resurrection, among his last instructions is one to do nothing yet.
Verse 6: "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" Their question is still imperfectly framed at the very end. He does redirect it: it is not for them to know times and seasons, and he turns them toward the Spirit and worldwide witness.
Verse 8: "you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth." Note the verb: not you shall witness, but you shall be my witnesses. And note the geography St. Luke actually gives: Jerusalem, then all Judea and Samaria, then the end of the earth. The mapping onto where you are, your region, the people you would rather skip, and everywhere is our analogy rather than the verse’s own meaning; Jerusalem was not the Galilean apostles’ home.
Verses 10 and 11: two men in white ask why they are standing there looking into heaven. Even at the Ascension, somebody has to tell them to stop staring and get moving.
The doors are shut for fear. He says "Peace be with you," and then shows them his hands and his side. He sends them with the wounds visible.
Verse 21: "As the Father has sent me, even so I send you." The measure of our sending is the Father’s sending of the Son, which should be sobering rather than flattering.
Verse 22: he breathed on them. The Greek enephysēsen is the same verb the Septuagint uses at Genesis 2:7, when God breathes life into the man, and at Ezekiel 37:9, over the dry bones. This is new creation language and it is checkable.
Verse 23: "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." In a Catholic study this must be named for what the Church teaches it to be: the institution of the sacrament of Reconciliation. See CCC 976, 1441-1442 and 1461.
This is tonight’s live discovery, so do not spend it. The passage is Daniel 7:13-14. Read it before the session with Matthew 28:18 in front of you.
Isaiah 49:6, where the Lord tells the servant that raising up the tribes of Jacob is too light a thing, and that he will give him as a light to the nations so that his salvation may reach to the end of the earth. St. Paul and Barnabas quote precisely this verse at Acts 13:47 when they turn to the Gentiles. Acts 1:8 is that promise being handed to the eleven.
Genesis 2:7 and Ezekiel 37:1-10. In Ezekiel the prophet is told to prophesy to the breath, and the breath comes into the slain and they live and stand on their feet, an exceedingly great host. John 20:22 uses the Septuagint’s verb from both scenes.
Evangelizing, Pope St. Paul VI wrote, is the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize.
He is not describing one department of parish life. He is saying that a Church which stopped doing this would not be a quieter Church; it would be a betrayal of what she is. Read it at the end of thirteen weeks and it lands differently than it would have in week one.
Pope St. Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi 14 (1975).
The Council taught that the pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature, because she draws her origin from the mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit according to the plan of God the Father.
John 20:21 expresses one biblical dimension of that fuller Trinitarian teaching. The Church does not have a mission the way an organization has a strategy. She is downstream of a sending that started in God.
Second Vatican Council, Ad Gentes 2 (1965).
In the manuscript written for her sister, St. Thérèse describes wanting every vocation at once, missionary, priest, apostle, martyr, and finding the answer in love: in the heart of the Church, her mother, she would be love.
She entered Carmel at fifteen and died at twenty-four, having lived her missionary vocation entirely from an enclosed Carmel and never served in a mission territory. The Church named her patroness of the missions. This is for anyone who has spent thirteen weeks quietly certain that the real work belongs to someone more capable.
St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, Manuscript B.
The Great Commission appears in the second paragraph of the Catechism, before anything else is said about anything.
Thread A, "With him, and sent," CLOSES TONIGHT. Mark 3:14, appointed to be with him and to be sent. Mark 5:18, a man who asked to be with him and was sent home instead. Matthew 28:20, I am with you always. The being with was never the alternative to the sending, and in the end he supplies it. Build 4 is where this happens. Do not preach it; ask the question and wait.
Thread B. Resolved in Session 9. Tonight it appears once more in Acts 1:4, where the last order before the Ascension is to wait, and in Acts 1:8, where the power is named as the Spirit. You may point at it directly.
Thread C. Resolved in Session 8.
After tonight. Your group has nine sessions of practice behind them and no scheduled next week. The Commissioning section exists to give them one thing to keep and one person to hand this to. If you do nothing else in the last twenty minutes, do that.
The five modules. Tell the group they exist and what they cover, and offer to run whichever ones the group wants. The module on the people closest to you is the one most groups will ask for.
1. Land Matthew 28:17 on the whole room: the commission was given to people who were worshiping and wavering at the same time.
2. Have the group find that there is one imperative in the commission, and that the rest is participles describing how.
3. Close Thread A out of the three texts, in the group’s own words.
4. Establish that among the last instructions before the Ascension was one to wait, and that the power named is the Holy Spirit.
5. Name John 20:23 for what the Church has always understood it to be.
6. Have the group find Daniel 7:13-14 underneath "all authority."
7. Commission everyone by name, and send them out with one practice they will keep and one person they will hand this to.
Minutes | Movement |
0:00-0:04 | Opening prayer. |
0:04-0:11 | Field report on rung twelve, telling someone who knew you before. |
0:11-0:17 | Win questions. |
0:17-0:23 | Read all three passages aloud: Matthew 28:16-20, Acts 1:1-11, John 20:19-23. |
0:23-0:33 | Build 1 and 2, worship and doubt, and what the commission rests on. |
0:33-0:41 | Build 3, the one imperative. |
0:41-0:49 | Live discovery: Daniel 7 underneath "all authority." |
0:49-0:58 | Build 4, the close of Thread A. Give this its time and let the silence run. |
0:58-1:08 | Build 5 and 6, Acts 1 and John 20. |
1:08-1:16 | Build 7, the build-then-press on whether this was given to us at all. |
1:16-1:28 | The Commissioning. Twelve minutes, protected. |
1:28-1:30 | Closing prayer. |
Somebody in your group has done every practice for twelve weeks and has nothing visible to show for it. Tonight is the night they are most likely to say so, or most likely to stay silent about it. Read Luke 10:20 from last week again if you need to, and make sure the Commissioning does not turn into a results report.
If the group wants to trade success stories, let it run briefly and then stop it deliberately. The person with nothing to report needs the last twenty minutes more than the person with something.
If someone treats tonight as the end, correct it gently and concretely: the daily prayer for three names does not have an end date, and that is the single practice to keep.
If the room is emotional, let it be. Do not manage it, and do not extend the session past ninety minutes to accommodate it. End on time and stay afterward.
Matthew 28:16-20; Acts 1:1-11; John 20:19-23
Lord Jesus, thirteen weeks ago you called us to be with you, and tonight you send us out. We are not finished doubting and we are not finished changing, and you commissioned people like us on a mountain in Galilee anyway. Give us your Spirit, and go with us. Amen.
Seven minutes tonight, and take more people than usual.
Last week you told someone who knew you before what the Lord has done for you. How did that go?
Leader: make sure at least one person who has nothing to report gets to say so out loud, and receive it exactly as warmly as the good news. If nobody volunteers that, say it about yourself.
▸ Thirteen weeks ago you wrote three names. What has changed in you since then? Not in them.
▸ What is the hardest thing you have been asked to do in this study?
Read all three passages aloud, in this order: Matthew 28:16-20, Acts 1:1-11, John 20:19-23. Ask the group to listen for what all three have in common, because the answer is the same three things every time.
1. Matthew 28:17. Two things happen in one verse. What are they?
They saw him, and they worshiped him. And "some doubted."
The Greek verb appears only twice in the New Testament: here, and at Matthew 14:31, where Jesus asks Peter why he doubted after hauling him out of the water. It means wavering or hesitating rather than settled unbelief.
Be honest about the translation. The phrase can be read as "some of them doubted" or as "they hesitated," and English versions differ. RSV2CE reads "but some doubted." Either way the fact stands.
The Great Commission was handed to a group that was worshiping and wavering in the same moment. Nobody in this room has to have finished doubting before they are sent, and if you have been waiting for certainty, this verse ends the wait.
2. Verse 18. Before he commands anything, he says one thing. What does the commission rest on?
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." Everything that follows is grounded on his authority, not on the eleven’s readiness, training, or nerve.
And notice the passive: it "has been given" to him. This is the Father giving universal messianic authority to the incarnate and risen Son in the economy of salvation, not a statement that the eternal Son acquired his divine authority.
The practical consequence for your group is direct. When you speak to one of your three, you are not asserting your own credibility. You have none to spend and you do not need any.
3. Verses 19 and 20. How many finite imperatives are there in this sentence? Look at the verbs carefully.
One main finite imperative: make disciples. In the Greek, "going," "baptizing," and "teaching" are participles carrying out and specifying that mandate. Be careful not to imply that "go" lacks directive force: a participle in this construction commonly carries imperatival weight.
And how it happens is worth naming: baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that he has commanded. Sacrament and catechesis, together, which is exactly the pair Sessions 7 and 11 arrived at from different directions.
Note "all that I have commanded you." Not a curated selection, and not only the parts that go down easily.
Do not preview this. The echo is strong and most people have never seen it.
Have someone read Matthew 28:18 aloud again: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me."
Then have a second person read Daniel 7:13-14 aloud.
Then ask: what is given to the one like a son of man, and by whom, and for how long?
What they should find: in Daniel, one like a son of man comes with the clouds of heaven to the Ancient of Days, and to him is given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him, and his dominion is everlasting and shall not pass away.
Then land it. The Great Commission opens by evoking that vision; it is a strong intertextual echo rather than a verbatim quotation. "Son of Man" is Jesus’s own most frequent title for himself, and on the mountain in Galilee he tells the eleven that the thing Daniel saw given has been given. The command to go to all nations follows immediately, because Daniel already said all peoples and nations would serve him.
4. Verse 20, the last clause. Now turn back to Mark 3:14, and then Mark 5:18. Read all three aloud in that order. What just happened?
Leader: ask this and then be quiet. Do not help. This is the last movement of the study and the group has everything it needs to see it.
Mark 3:14: he appointed twelve to be with him, and to be sent out to preach. Mark 5:18: the healed man begged that he might be with him, and was refused and sent home. Matthew 28:20: "lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age."
The thing the Twelve were given, and the thing the Gerasene asked for and did not get, turns out to be the thing Christ promises to everyone he sends, permanently, in the last sentence of St. Matthew’s Gospel.
Being with him was never the alternative to being sent. It is what the sending is made of. And in the end it is not something we secure by staying close. He supplies it, on the road, wherever we are sent.
Let the room sit in silence for a moment. Do not add anything to this.
5. Acts 1:1, and then verses 4 to 8. What does St. Luke call his entire Gospel? And what is the last instruction before the Ascension?
He calls it an account of all that Jesus began to do and teach. The whole Gospel is the beginning. Acts is what Jesus went on doing, through the Church, which means the book has never really closed.
And among his last instructions is the command to wait. Not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father. After three years of formation, a crucifixion, and a resurrection, the order is: do nothing yet.
Then verse 6: they ask whether he will now restore the kingdom to Israel. Their question is still imperfectly framed at the very end, and he redirects rather than simply leaving it: it is not for them to know times and seasons, and he turns them to what they will receive.
Verse 8: "you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses." Not you shall witness. You shall be witnesses. It is an identity before it is an activity.
And the geography St. Luke gives is Jerusalem, then all Judea and Samaria, then the end of the earth. Reading that as where you are, your region, the people you would rather skip, and everywhere is an analogy of ours rather than the verse’s meaning: Jerusalem was not the Galilean apostles’ home. Samaria being third is the part worth sitting with.
6. John 20:19-23. What does he show them before he sends them, what does he breathe, and what does he give them at the end?
He shows them his hands and his side. The doors are shut for fear, he says "Peace be with you," and then he shows them the wounds. He sends them with the marks of what the sending costs still visible.
Verse 21 sets the measure: "As the Father has sent me, even so I send you." That is a sobering sentence rather than a flattering one.
Verse 22: he breathed on them. The Greek verb is the same one the Septuagint uses at Genesis 2:7, when God breathes life into the man, and at Ezekiel 37:9, over the dry bones. This is creation language, used deliberately.
Verse 23: "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." The Church teaches that this is the institution of the sacrament of Reconciliation. See CCC 976 and 1461.
Put the three passages together: each one hands over an authority that is not ours, a task, and a presence. The three recur; do not press them into an identical order, since in John 20 the sending precedes the breathing and the authority to forgive follows it.
7. Someone says: the Great Commission was given to the apostles on a mountain, not to me. All this "every Catholic is a missionary" language flattens the difference between the ordained and the laity. Are they right?
Work the build-then-press below. Half of this is Catholic doctrine and must be conceded, and the conclusion still does not follow.
"Christ has no body now but yours." Your group will meet this quotation, usually attributed to St. Teresa of Ávila, often on a parish bulletin. It is not found in her works and scholars regard it as a modern composition. The sentiment is defensible; the attribution is not. Use it as a live example of the discipline this study has been practicing all along: say what you know, at the strength you know it.
Why "wait"? Acts 1:4 has them told to wait for the promise, and Acts 2 is what they were waiting for. Between the Ascension and Pentecost, Acts shows them devoting themselves to prayer (1:14) and also acting: Peter addresses the brethren and Matthias is chosen (1:15-26). Any group leaving this study with a plan should notice where the plan starts.
The concentric circles. Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the end of the earth. Samaria is third, and it is the one nobody would have chosen. Session 4 was spent there.
Build the objection at full strength:
Build it properly, because the first half is not a mistake. It is the Church’s teaching.
The commission in Matthew 28 is given to the eleven. And it names baptizing and teaching, which in the ordinary course are done by the Church through her ministers. Verse 23 in John is more pointed still: the forgiveness and retention of sins is the sacrament of Reconciliation, and CCC 1461 is explicit that its ministers are those who have received Holy Orders.
The Church teaches that the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial priesthood differ in essence and not only in degree. That is not a matter of taste, and blurring it is a real error and not a generous one.
And there is a genuine failure mode. Parishes where everybody is a minister of something and nobody is actually pastored. Laypeople who take on functions that were never given to them, and who eventually burn out or do harm.
Then press, from the text:
Now press, from the text.
First: Acts 1:8. "You shall be my witnesses." Acts 1:8 is addressed to the apostolic eyewitnesses, so do not rest the argument there. Rest it on baptism and confirmation, on CCC 900, which says the laity have the obligation and the right to work so that the message of salvation is known and accepted, and on the Council’s teaching that the laity are assigned to the apostolate by the Lord himself and not by delegation from the hierarchy.
Second, and this settles it: turn to Acts 8:1-4. After the persecution, St. Luke says they were all scattered throughout Judea and Samaria except the apostles. And then, verse 4: those who were scattered went about preaching the word. The apostles stayed in Jerusalem. The preaching went out through everyone else.
Third: Acts 11:19-21. Those same scattered people reached Antioch, spoke to Greeks, and "a great number that believed turned to the Lord." One of the earliest major Gentile Christian communities was formed through people St. Luke does not bother to name. Cornelius’s household comes earlier, in Acts 10, so avoid the flat superlative. The apostles arrive later to see what happened.
Fourth: the Church says so herself. CCC 900 states that the laity have the obligation and the right to work so that the message of salvation is known and accepted, and the Council teaches that the laity are assigned to the apostolate by the Lord himself rather than by delegation from the hierarchy.
Now concede everything that should be conceded, and be precise. You cannot ordinarily baptize. You cannot absolve. You cannot consecrate. The ministerial priesthood differs from the common priesthood in essence. None of that is a limitation this study wants to talk you out of; it is exactly why Session 10 insisted that you hand people to the Church rather than to yourself.
The commission does not make you a priest. It makes you the person who brings somebody to one.
▸ What is the one practice from these thirteen weeks that you are actually going to keep?
▸ Who are you going to hand this to?
This is the Commissioning. Twelve minutes, and do not let it be rushed or turned into a results report.
One. Ask everyone to write their three names down one more time, on a fresh piece of paper, from memory. Some names will have changed since week one. That is fine and worth noticing silently.
Two. Go around the room. Each person says either their three names out loud, or simply "three people," whichever they prefer. Say the option before you begin, and mean it. Nobody explains, nobody comments, and nobody prays over anyone else’s names out loud.
Three. Then ask each person for two sentences only: the one practice they are keeping, and the name of the person they are handing this study to. The practice most of them should keep is the daily prayer by name, because it is the one rung of the ladder with no end date on it.
Four. Tell them plainly what happens now. There is no session next week. The three names do not expire. The five modules exist and you will run any of them the group asks for, and the one on the people closest to you is the one most groups want.
Five. Close by praying over the group, out loud, by name if you can. Then read Matthew 28:20 one final time and stop talking.
Leader guidance. If someone has nothing to report and no visible fruit, this is the moment they are most exposed. Make sure the format protects them: two sentences each, no explanations, no stories. Everyone leaves having said the same amount.
Rung 13 of the ladder. There is no rung fourteen, and that is the point. The ladder was never a course; it was a description of an ordinary Christian life.
▫ Keep praying for the three by name, daily. This is the one thing not to stop. It has no end date and no completion criterion.
▫ Keep saying your one sentence. You will get better at it and it will change over time.
▫ Go back to whichever rung you skipped or fumbled. Most people know which one it was.
▫ Hand this study to the person you named tonight. Give them your take-homes if that helps.
▫ Ask your leader about the five standalone modules. The one on the people closest to you is the one most groups want.
▫ And when somebody says yes, remember Session 10: take them somewhere, walk in with them, and hand them to the Church rather than to yourself.
Lord Jesus, you stood on a mountain with eleven men who were worshiping you and doubting at the same time, and you sent them to the ends of the earth. Send us. Give us your Spirit, because we have no power of our own and we have stopped pretending otherwise. Keep our joy where you put it. And go with us, as you promised, all the days, to the close of the age. Amen.
Every passage used in this session, in the order it appears.
Passage | Where and why |
Matthew 28:16-20 | Primary text, read aloud in full. |
Matthew 14:31 | Build 1. The only other use of the verb for doubting. |
Mark 3:14 | Build 4. Appointed to be with him, from Session 1. |
Mark 5:18 | Build 4. The healed man asks to be with him, from Session 12. |
Daniel 7:13-14 | Live discovery. The one like a son of man, to whom dominion is given. |
Acts 1:1-11 | Primary text. Began, wait, receive power, be witnesses. |
Acts 1:14 | Dig Deeper. Ten days of prayer between the commission and the first sermon. |
Acts 8:1-4 | Build 7, the press. All scattered except the apostles, and those scattered preached. |
Acts 11:19-21 | Build 7, the press. The first Gentile church, founded by unnamed people. |
John 20:19-23 | Primary text. The wounds, the breath, and the forgiveness of sins. |
Genesis 2:7; Ezekiel 37:1-10 | Old Testament Roots. The Septuagint verb behind John 20:22. |
Isaiah 49:6; Acts 13:47 | Old Testament Roots. A light to the nations, to the end of the earth. |
Luke 10:20 | Leader notes. Rejoice that your names are written in heaven, from Session 12. |