Happy Good Thieves

The temptation is to hyper-analyze our spiritual lives, to worry about having enough faith or saying the “right combination” of prayers, calculated for “maximum spiritual gain.” A figure that looms large in Lent is such a helpful corrective against that.

Everyone else in the Gospel gives Christ some sort of title or address when they speak with Him: “Lord,” “Master,” “Son of David,” “Rabbi,” etc. Only one person ever simply calls Him “Jesus.”

Tradition identifies him as St. Dysmas, the “good thief” at the Crucifixion. The other thief, traditionally named Gestas, “heaps abuse” on Christ as He hangs in agony, lashing out at Him in words that must have cut our Lord to the heart: “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!”

Dysmas, however, sees the reality of the situation. He knows that he is receiving punishment for his sins, and he has a proper fear of God. He knows what justice is, and he knows that Christ has done nothing wrong. He’s seen Christ endure all of His Passion with perseverance and love in His eyes; he’s seen the kingly heart of Christ ascend the hill of Calvary; he now sees Christ in the last minutes of His life, offering forgiveness to those who don’t know what they’re doing. He knows that Christ is king, for he himself knows that Christ is about to enter His kingdom. But Dysmas doesn’t address Him with lofty titles or a long monologue, or even a self-justification why his own suffering is so unfair. He makes a singular request, the only instance where we see someone call Christ by the simple title of “Jesus.”

Suffering and death are a great social leveler.

“Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.”

It’s a bold request, one might even say “presumptuous,” but it is a request made in faith. Dysmas not only knows that he probably deserves his punishment, but also that Jesus is the true king unjustly punished. In a faith that looks more like desperation, as he dies Dysmas turns to the true King to make a simple request. It is met with an even bolder response:

“Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

The first one home is a thief; one who reached out with a scrap of faith in a moment of desperation, and is met by an overabundant generosity on the part of Christ.

I can think of no better reading of this passage than from the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus in his amazing book Death on A Friday Afternoon (absolutely read this book if you have not already).
 

“Certainly Jesus was bearing the pain of Dysmas, and of the other thief, and of all humanity half aware and unaware. “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Jesus does not reject any who turn to Him. At times we turn to Him with little faith, at times with a mix of faith and doubt when we are more sure of the doubt than the faith. Jesus is not fastidious of the quality of faith. He takes what He can get, so to speak, and gives immeasurably more than He receives. He takes our faith more seriously than we do and makes of it more than we ever could. His response to our faith is greater than our faith… give Him an opening, almost any opening, and He opens life to wonder beyond measure… For paradise we long. For perfection we were made. We don’t know what it would be like or feel like, but we must settle for nothing less. This longing is the source of the hunger and dissatisfaction that mark our lives; it drives our ambition. What we long for is touched in our exaltations; in our devastations it is known by its absence. This longing makes our loves and friendships possible, and so very unsatisfactory. The hunger is for nothing less than paradise, nothing less than perfect communion with the Absolute - with the Good, the True, the Beautiful - communion with the perfectly One in whom all the fragments of our scattered existence come together at last and forever. We must not stifle this longing. It is a holy dissatisfaction. Such dissatisfaction is not a sickness to be healed, but the seed of a promise to be fulfilled…

Look at Him who is ever looking at you. With whatever faith you have, however feeble and flickering and mixed with doubt, look at Him. Look at Him with whatever faith and know that your worry about your lack of faith is itself a sign of faith. Do not look at your faith. Look at Him. Keep looking, and faith will take care of itself.”

In our moments of desperation, when our faith is weak and we hardly know what to do, in the darkness that seems to be everywhere these days, we look to Christ to speak the words of truth. We don’t look for justification in activism or all the “holy things” that we pad our “Catholic résumé” with, rather we turn to Christ and let our faith take care of itself.

Lent is a great time to reflect on how we approach both our weaknesses and our strengths, because on that fateful day that we go before the throne of the Lord, I suspect all of us will be surprised at the attitude we must take before the Lord. Neuhaus again:
 

“Whatever little growth in holiness I have experienced, whatever strength I have received from the company of the saints, whatever understanding I have attained of God and His ways - these and all the other gifts I have received I will bring gratefully to the throne. But in seeking entry to that heavenly kingdom, I will, with Dysmas, look to Christ and Christ alone.”
 

To close, I want to share with you part of the last will and testament of Fr. Christian de Chergé, a Trappist monk who was killed by terrorists in Algeria in May of 1996. Fr. Christian had left his will with his family “to be opened in the event of my death.” The full document is beautiful and profound (you can read it here), but this selection seems especially relevant:

“If it should happen one day—and it could be today—that I become a victim of the terrorism which now seems ready to encompass all the foreigners living in Algeria, I would like my community, my Church, my family, to remember that my life was given to God and to this country. I ask them to accept that the One Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal departure. I ask them to pray for me: for how could I be found worthy of such an offering? I ask them to be able to associate such a death with the many other deaths that were just as violent, but forgotten through indifference and anonymity.

My life has no more value than any other. Nor any less value. In any case, it has not the innocence of childhood. I have lived long enough to know that I share in the evil which seems, alas, to prevail in the world, even in that which would strike me blindly. I should like, when the time comes, to have a clear space which would allow me to beg forgiveness of God and of all my fellow human beings, and at the same time to forgive with all my heart the one who would strike me down...

For this life given up, totally mine and totally theirs, I thank God who seems to have wished it entirely for the sake of that joy in everything and in spite of everything. In this “thank you,” which is said for everything in my life from now on, I certainly include you, friends of yesterday and today, and you my friends of this place, along with my mother and father, my brothers and sisters and their families—the hundredfold granted as was promised!

And you also, the friend of my final moment, who would not be aware of what you were doing. Yes, for you also I wish this “thank you”—and this adieu—to commend you to the God whose face I see in yours.

And may we find each other, happy “good thieves,” in Paradise, if it pleases God, the Father of us both. Amen.”
 

In these last few weeks of Lent, may our faith look more and more like St. Dysmas: looking to Christ and Christ alone, and may we all find each other as good thieves before the throne of God.

P.S. If you’re looking for a punchy short story that really emphasizes these points, read “Revelation” by Flannery O’Connor. It’s unsettling and profound.

 Nicholas Vance is a seminarian studying for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. A West St. Paul native, he came back to the Faith his freshman year of college, and became involved with Saint Paul’s Outreach and the Catholic Studies community. He graduated from the University of St. Thomas in 2018 with degrees in Communications & Journalism and Catholic Studies. A rueful marathoner, a Röpke-Wojtyła Fellow with the Catholic University of America, and a once-upon-a-time youth minister, he loves hiking, reading, playing music, and the delightful first sip of coffee in the morning. He proudly calls Transfiguration in Oakdale (“the rockin’ East Side”) his home parish, and is in seminary formation at the Saint Paul Seminary.