Today in Mark’s Gospel, we have the great commissioning of Jesus’ followers. At the very end of Mark’s Gospel, our active lives as disciples of Christ are starting to begin. Commission, or co-mission, like the word cooperate. Commission is a “together thing.” Even the most clueless of Jesus’ disciples now get it. Jesus has started his mission and even completed the greatest part by sacrificing his very life for us.

The gospel that Jesus challenges the terrified eleven to bring into the world to proclaim, begins with the perspective that we belong to one another, that everyone matters, that we are one human village with God’s peace at its center.

— Father Jerry O’Donnell