The Passover from Criminal to Saint

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - March 21, 2008

There are many saints fittingly associated with Good Friday: the Blessed Mother, the apostle John, Mary Magdalene, Simon of Cyrene, and Veronica. All of them, in one way or another, supported Jesus as he took our place on death row.

The most remarkable saint of all, however, was the one who was with Jesus on death row. The Good Thief certainly was the least likely saint of Good Friday — and maybe of all time. But he is, in some ways, the most fitting Good Friday saint, because he is the greatest model of what Good Friday is all about.

As he was being nailed to the Cross, Jesus did not cry out in pain. He didn't shriek, as men would be expected to do in such circumstances, either insisting on his innocence, or condemning those who sentenced them, or imploring forgiveness for their misdeeds. Jesus, instead, cried out to his Father and begged him to forgive the sins of others: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" His first thought for those who were brutally killing him was not retaliation but exculpation. He had come to call and save sinners and, even in agony, never wavered from that mission.

We see him fulfill that mission in his interaction with the bandit on his right. After Jesus, hanging on the Cross, had been mocked by the Jewish leaders, by the soldiers, and even by those passing by, he received what may have been the most piercing mockery of all from the thief on his left.

St. Luke tells us that the brigand "kept deriding him and saying, 'Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!'" While the jeers from soldiers, the Sanhedrin, and the passing mob were probably anticipated, the sneers from the burglar on his side were likely totally unexpected. Jesus had long been known as the "friend of tax collectors and sinners." He had stuck up for them and risked his reputation for their sake. To be attacked by one of those malefactors with whom Jesus identified with special predilection probably stung as much as the blistering kiss of Judas.

But God seeks to bring good out of every evil, and from the ridicule from the sinistral swindler came the conversion of the dextral. We do not know what it was that got this man, so accustomed to prey on the innocent, to stick up for one. Maybe it was watching Jesus suffer the same pain of crucifixion in a totally different way from him and his fellow thief. Maybe it was hearing his strange plea to the one he called "Father" for the forgiveness of those who were executing him. Maybe he had come to the conclusion at the end of his life that evil simply doesn't pay and, having wasted his life until then, he didn't want to squander the few precious moments he had left.

Whatever the reason, honesty and the fear of God returned to him. He twisted toward his fellow thief and tried to revivify these traits in him before the time when there would be no time left. Even though it would have been excruciatingly painful for him to talk, he rebuked his fellow rustler and said, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong."

In doing so, the thief on the right earned for all eternity the paradoxical adjective "good." He had humbly told the truth. He had thought of someone other than himself. He had stuck up for someone who was innocent. This humble, other-centered honesty is a necessary condition for effective prayer and it occasioned what might have been the first — and maybe only — real prayer of his life. Whereas before he might have been tempted to steal what he didn't deserve, he now realized, with his pick-pocketing hands nailed to wood, that there was another way: he could ask. He saw now that there was the possibility that someone else, out of sheer goodness and generosity, might give what he could never have merited. So he turned to the putative malefactor in the middle and asked, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

This prayer showed tremendously deep faith in Jesus. It is quite natural for those who are about to die to desire that people will remember them after they're gone. But in this case, he was asking a dying man — one who would in fact expire before him — to keep him in mind. In doing so, moreover, he saw something that perhaps no one present on Calvary except the Blessed Mother recognized: that this despised, naked, lacerated, blood-soaked, crucified man next to him was a sovereign whose reign was not about to end but to begin. He knew that Jesus would be able to remember.

Jesus turned his aching head toward his companion in suffering. From his throne on Golgotha, with the largesse benefiting a king, Jesus vastly exceeded what was sought. Not only would the dying thief have a place in his thoughts, he would have a place in his kingdom. "Amen, I say to you," Jesus declared, "this day you shall be with me in paradise."

In the span of an instant, the good thief passed from a sinner to a saint, from a criminal to someone canonized even before his death. And as Jesus once promised, heaven rejoiced more for that repentant sinner than for 99 who never needed to repent.

In his great Eucharistic hymn, Adoro Te Devote, St. Thomas Aquinas sings to his Eucharistic Lord, peto quod petivit latro poenitens, "I ask for what the repentant thief asked for!"

There's no greater prayer. Jesus died on Good Friday wishing to be able to respond personally to that request from each of us.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.