Before ascending to the Father, Jesus sends the disciples out to preach and addresses them with parting words. He calls them to proclaim the good news to the whole world, to "all creation," and after this He lists the miracles that are to accompany those who believe. These signs of divine presence look simply fantastic, and there is a strong temptation to understand them figuratively rather than literally. Yet in the last verses of this chapter Mark clearly says that their preaching was carried out with "the word confirmed by the signs that followed."

How often we preach only with words, retelling Gospel truths, but do not embody them in our own lives. The Savior warns us against this before His Ascension, insisting that words must be accompanied by signs. Of course, our faith is not as strong as the apostles' faith was, and we cannot heal the sick with our own shadow, as Peter did. What we can do is only to trust that the Lord Himself will work a miracle, and according to our strength to try to relieve our neighbor's suffering. This will be a real sign of our living faith.

Mark describes briefly and concisely the forty days that passed from the Savior's resurrection to His ascension, much more briefly than the other evangelists. And he concludes his account with an equally brief description of the Ascension, reducing it to one sentence, unlike, for example, Luke, who in the Book of Acts wrote a whole account of this event, though a short one. As is evident, for Mark both events, the Resurrection and the Ascension, are connected with each other, and not simply connected, such a connection can also be seen in Luke, but exist as stages of one and the same spiritual process, determined by the dynamic of the Kingdom entering the world.

When viewed from our world, still not transformed by God's breath, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and what we usually call the second coming of Christ are seen as different events, though connected with one another and logically flowing one from another. Being in a world separated from the Kingdom, we perceive the elements of a single process as separate events. In reality there is no break between them. One could say that Jesus rises in order to ascend and then return in glory, but that would be the picture opened to a person looking at what is happening in the Kingdom from outside.

In reality He does not disappear anywhere; we simply, like the apostles on the day of the Ascension, lose sight of Him. We lose sight because we cannot look deeply enough into the Kingdom, at least in our ordinary state. The meeting with Him by the apostle Paul on the Damascus road, for example, testifies clearly: He had not gone away at all. The question is only how much we live the life of the Kingdom, and therefore His life.

Immediately after the Resurrection, during those very forty days, the disciples saw Him distinctly because He had not yet moved far from the boundary that divides the Kingdom and our world, not yet transformed. At that time the Kingdom had only begun to open itself to the world; it was not yet so vast that it could not be seen as a whole, even without crossing the boundary dividing the two worlds. This, however, could not continue forever: the Kingdom had to enter the world in a fullness far greater than what was visible to the apostles in the first forty days after the Resurrection. Accordingly, Jesus, as its King, had to take His royal place in it and disappear from the sight of those who had not yet crossed the boundary. For those who had crossed it, however, He was always visible. Paul, it appears, was the first, but by no means the last, of those who were granted to see Him in this way. And when at the end of time the Kingdom opens in fullness, everyone will again see the Risen One; whether the meeting will be joyful or not depends on the person himself.

Mark depicts the events after Christ's Resurrection very briefly. Almost every episode in this account is described in more detail in the other Gospels. Mark wants to emphasize the most important thing. So the disciples are hiding from persecution, overcome by grief and despair. Only certain women, who did not leave Jesus in the hour of His death, now want to pay Him their last duty and complete the burial they had not finished because of the Sabbath rest. It is to them, His most faithful followers, that the Angel announces the stunning, fearful, and at the same time joyful news: He has risen. He is not here. But the disciples cannot believe Mary Magdalene, to whom Jesus appeared, or the two other disciples who saw Him. They are so absorbed in their grief and despair that their hearts close themselves to hope, even though Jesus had repeatedly predicted His Resurrection to them. Finally, Jesus Himself appears among them and rebukes them for hardness of heart and unbelief. By His appearing He scatters their grief and fear.

The risen Savior sends the disciples to proclaim to "all creation" the joyful news of the new life that began with His Resurrection. He says that through faith and baptism a person already in this life enters salvation: liberation from slavery to fear, sin, death, and eternal condemnation. Christ names the miraculous signs and gifts now possessed by the new humanity, reborn and raised to life in God. The authority of Christ's disciples over death, illness, and dark powers is testimony to the presence of Christ Himself among them. Even now He lives among us and in us, blessing the preaching of the Gospel of Life.