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Andrea Mantegna’s ‘The Calvary,’ oil on wood, 1457-1459.

Lectio Divina – The Good Thief

This is Holy Week, 2025, just a short time separated from Passover. In our religious tradition, there are stories and moments in the Old and New Testaments that grab hold of me and stick from our first recollection. One such story is about the good thief.

According to the story in Luke’s Gospel [2], Christ is on the cross, being put to death between two common criminals. The soldiers jeer. The thief on the left bitterly mocks Jesus. “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” The criminal on the other side rebukes him. “Have you no fear of God, when you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this Man has done nothing criminal.” He looks at Christ and says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And Jesus answers, “Amen I say to you, this day you will be with me in paradise.”

These biblical characters are just minutes from death. One thief goes out the way he’d always likely been, insolent and mean. The other thief has a heart for justice—we deserve what’s happening to us, but he doesn’t—and he asks for mercy. Christ communicates to the Good Thief the sentiment, you are not forever alone, soon we’ll be together in Heaven.

The story, in Luke’s Gospel, is often interpreted as a moment of grace and redemption, and it is those sentiments that are often repeated. Yet, it’s also a story involving the simple idea that “it’s never too late.” Famous words—It’s never too late. In common speech people ask, “If not now, when?” Or they say it’s never too late to study Spanish or sing their favorite song out loud or walk the Camino. In this story, however, it is about the infinitely more important idea: it’s not aboud doing, it’s about being….it’s never too late to become a better person.

15th-century Arab Christian Icon of Saint Dismas from the Berlin State Museum, reading “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom”.

Wall Street Journalist, Peggy Noonan, asked New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan why the story of The Good Thief moves so many Catholics.[1] Dolan calls the Thief — Ditmas. His response to Noonan sounded like a merry devotional poem. “I’m ecstatic at your interest in my buddy, St. Dismas.”[3] “I love him,” the Cardinal said. “I’ve always had a deep devotion. When I was a kid at Catholic school, Sister called him ‘the thief who stole Heaven.’ ”

It isn’t just that Christ comforted the thief on his right, the thief comforted him in return. Cardinal Dolan continues by interpreting the scene: “Here is Jesus at the most desolate moment of his life. He was alone, the apostles had run off. He thinks, ‘This thief professes faith in me. He’s asking me to perform a miracle and get him into Heaven.’ This is an immense consolation to Jesus.”

As Cardinal Dolan reports: “Pope Benedict once said this is the only time in the Gospels someone calls the Lord just by his first name—Jesus, not ‘Jesus, son of God’ or ‘Rabbi Jesus.’ This thief felt so close to him he uses his first name.” For Christians the story resonates because “we’re talking about all of us—if the [good] thief got in, we could all get in; if he receives mercy, we all have a chance.”

“As a priest, I hear [final thoughts from] those at the end of their life, reconciling with God, talking about things they’ve done. They are asking, ‘Will he remember me?’ ”

Cardinal Dolan asked Noonan if she knew the old story about what happened to Joseph, Mary and Jesus as they journeyed to Egypt to escape Herod’s murderous scourge of the Holy Innocents.[4] “The legend is that a band of robbers and brigands descends on them. A little boy with the bandits sees Jesus and goes to his father, the band leader, and says, ‘Please let them live, there’s something about that child.’ And the Holy Family was spared. And that little boy—was Dismas!” As legend goes, he is the one who spared Christ. And it is Christ who later spared him. “As the Italians say, if it ain’t true it oughta be true!”

“When we turn to God and ask for some renewal, some rehab, some reform—once we turn to him in our need, we’re like Dismas.”

“Christians believe this season is one of resurrection, Jews [believe this is] a time of rebirth—a rebirth in the natural world, but also coming out of Egypt into freedom. This is a fruitful time to ask the questions about what we want to be. We are on a journey, all of us leaving a narrowing, constricted place for a place of freedom. This is a narrative that happens in every generation, and in each of our lives.”

Thank you for reflecting on these sentiments of being better humans with me, whatever season of life we find ourselves.

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[1] https://www.wsj.com/opinion/easter-and-passover-lesson-its-never-too-late-ec9d00ef

[2] Gospel of Luke 23: 38-43

[3] The Good Thief has various names in the different interpretations and translations. He is known as The Penitent Thief, The Wise Thief, The Thief on the Right of Jesus, the Grateful Thief, or simply one of the Thieves on the Cross. In the Catholic traditions, although he is unnamed in the Luke Gospel writing, in the Gospel of Nicodemus he is given the name: Dysmas or Dismas.

[4] King Herod ruled that all male children in the vacinity of Bethlehem, under the age of two, must be slaughtered. The ruling was known as the Massacre or Slaughter of the Holy Innocents.