Gospel of Luke, chapter 23:42

A boy was not doing too well in public school. So, his parents got him into a Catholic school to see if he would improve his grades. Immediately the boy stopped watching TV and playing computer games and spent all his time at his studies. At the end of the year he was one of the best students in class getting straight A’s. His baffled parents asked him what happened. “The first day I went to school,” he explained, “and saw that man hanging up on the cross, I knew these people meant business.”

The sight of the crucified Christ might have spurred the young boy to success, but the crucifixion, in human terms, depicts failure. It signals a brutal end to the life and work of Jesus. When Jesus cried, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) God did not take him down from the cross. One of the thieves crucified with him even challenged him. “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” (Luke 23:39) and He was still hanging there. By every observable, human standard, the crucifixion was a disappointing end for Jesus whom we acclaim as our Lord and Savior.

Jesus has told us that His kingdom is not this world. By this He means to say that the ways and standards of His kingdom are not the ways and standard of the world. One of the first people to appreciate this mystery was the repentant thief on the cross. Choking with the pains of crucifixion and imminent death, he turns and says to Jesus, hanging on the next cross, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42). Unlike the third convict who asks to be delivered from the cross; this repentant thief knows that success in God’s kingdom is measured by a different set of standards. He knows that to get into the kingdom of Christ one has to be saved not from the cross but on the cross.

How often, the followers of Christ make the same mistake as the unrepentant thief; the mistake of seeking to vindicate themselves by a show of power, wealth or political connection.

There is a story about a knight who dragged himself back to the king’s court after a narrow escape from a wearisome campaign. The king ran out to meet him. “What is wrong, Sir Thomas?” asked the king. “My Lord,” answered the knight, “I have been out fighting your enemies to death.” “Which enemies?” asked the king? “Your enemies on the western border,” replied the knight. “But,” countered the king, “I have no enemies on the western border.” “Well,” replied the disillusioned knight, “now you do.” In his zeal to serve the king, he had been going about sowing seeds of enmity in a kingdom he was supposed to defend.

Let us not make the same mistake as the disillusioned knight who sowed the seed of enmity rather than the seed of love in the Lord’s Kingdom. The repentant thief on the cross, got is right. He accepted Jesus, crucified, who offered His life for our redemption on the cross.

Fr. Hugh Duffy