Jesus, Remember Me When You Come Into Your Kingdom

Each of us who encounter Jesus, the New Adam, in the event of Holy Week can single out one or more spiritual experiences that captured us and touched us deeply. Of course, every segment of the Christ-event from Palm Sunday to Easter is an encounter with our Redeemer, Savior and the Victor over sin and death.

All of us, by grace, enter into these events so that what happened can happen in us as we are transformed more into Sons and Daughters of God and members of God’s family.

Of many graced experiences during Holy Week over the years, one has been most intense in recent years. Good Friday is the Celebration of the Lord’s Passion. This year we will hear John’s account of the Passion and Death of Jesus. St. Luke’s Passion gives us three of the Seven Last Words of Jesus from the Cross.

Our Redeemer and Savior speaks words of forgiveness with love and mercy. First Word: “Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing”. Second Word: “Jesus forgives the thief who had asked: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom”. Jesus said “ ”Amen, I say to you; this day you will be with me in paradise”.

With our minds and hearts centered on the Passion and Death of Jesus we just heard, the Liturgy brings us to our personal and communal veneration of the Cross of Christ. The Cross is God’s decisive and deciding word to humanity. It has stood in our midst for two millennia as a sign of God’s love. The Cross shows what God thinks of us and what we ought to think of others.

Our Veneration of the Cross is an act of faith, hope and love. Back in 1984, Jacques Berthier (+1994) set the plea of the Good Thief to music. During the lengthy Veneration of the Cross, the faithful approach in a solemn procession. It is an experience of deep felt compunction and love.

The plea of the Good Thief becomes ours during the Veneration as the silence gives way over and over with the words of the Thief sung by all - with intense emotion, sorrow and hope - “Jesus, remember me”. Only Bishop Sheen can write well of this sacred drama.

Bishop Sheen with his mastery over words penetrates into the encounter between Jesus and one of the two thieves crucified with him. This profound portrayal is from Sheen’s 1958 classic ‘Life of Christ’.

Luke records the first of Jesus’ Seven Last Words - “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do”. One of the thieves was deeply moved by Jesus’ prayer to his Father to forgive. Sheen writes: “Reprimanding his brother thief for his blasphemy, he said: “Have you no fear of God, seeing you are under the same sentence. We are only paying the price for what we’ve done, but this man has done nothing wrong”.

Then, throwing himself upon Divine mercy, he asked for forgiveness: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom”.

A dying man asked a dying man for eternal life; a man without possessions asked a poor man for a Kingdom; a thief at the door of death asked to die like a thief and steal Paradise. One would have thought that a saint would have been the first soul purchased over the counter of Calvary by the red coins of Redemption, but it was a thief who was the escort of the King of Kings into Paradise.

If Our Lord had come merely as a teacher, the thief would never have asked for forgiveness. But since the thief’s request touched the reason of His coming to earth, namely to save souls, the thief heard the immediate answer: “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise”.

It was the thief’s last prayer, perhaps even his first. He knocked once, sought once, asked once, dared everything and found everything. When even the disciples were doubting and only one was present at the Cross, the thief owned and acknowledged Him as Savior.

Practically everything about the Body of Christ was tortured by whips and thorns and now fastened by nails, except his heart and his tongue - and these declared forgiveness that very day. But who can forgive sins, but God? And who can promise Paradise except Him who by nature is eternal to Paradise?

Yes, something like a little melody and words can make a big difference.