During my years serving in prison chaplaincy I was asked one particular question over and over again: “Will God forgive me for what I have done?” We might think this question is more relevant to people who have been publicly convicted of a crime. Yet it will no doubt resonate with each of us: “Will God forgive me for what I have done?”
There is ancient Christian reverence for the so-called good or penitent thief who was crucified beside Jesus that first Good Friday. The Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark mention two robbers hanging either side of the Lord at Calvary, both of whom joined with passers-by in mocking Jesus. But St. Luke’s Gospel tells us something more.
He alone records the plea and promise exchanged between one of the robbers and Jesus. This robber, the good thief, is called Dismas, a Greek name meaning ‘sunset’ or ‘dying.’ As the sun set on his life, Dismas pondered the salvific question: Will God forgive me for what I have done?
Perhaps it is not surprising that St. Luke takes care to document these details. His Gospel, in particular, is the Gospel of mercy; the Gospel of parables about lost things being found, whether sheep, or coins, or sons. In his desperation, the other thief - traditionally called Gestas, the ‘complainer’ or ‘moaner’ - challenges Jesus: “Are you not supposed to be the Christ? If you are, save yourself and,” more importantly for him, “save us.”
We can sense the anguish in his voice.
Thinking purely in human terms, could not this Jesus, with his reputation for miracles, simply wave his hand and make everything right. The answer comes not from the Lord, but from Dismas. He defends Jesus. He speaks of the need to fear God. He distinguishes himself and Gestas as those guilty of their crimes and deserving of punishment. But Jesus is different. Jesus is innocent.
Then follows an audacious act of faith. Dismas puts his need and hope for forgiveness into a penitential petition: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And Jesus — whose name means ‘the Lord is salvation’ — replies with a promise, “not so much from the wood of the cross,” comments St Leo the Great, but “from a throne of power.”
“Today,” says the Lord, “you will be with me in paradise.” This is the power of the cross. Yes, God will forgive us in Christ when we entrust ourselves entirely to him.
It is impossible to know how many people have imitated Dismas and called upon Christ in a moment of despair and from the misery of their mistakes.
Someone who certainly did this is the convicted murderer Jacques Fesch, born in a western suburb of Paris on 6 April 1930. He may seem an unlikely figure to consider as we approach Good Friday, but I think he can encourage all of us.
Jacques’ biography is a catalogue of tragedy and sadness. His parents were ill suited and eventually separated. Any faith drained from him by the time he was seventeen. Reckless indulgence marked his transition to adulthood, although he remained, in many ways, an adolescent.
Marrying his pregnant girlfriend, Pierette, Jacques struggled as a father to his daughter Véronique. After numerous extramarital affairs, he fathered a son, Gérard, with another woman. Unable to hold down a job, and proving time and time again incapable of responsibility, life in Paris became all too much for Jacques. Fancifully, he dreamed of buying a boat to sail away to Tahiti and leave all his chaos behind.
To fund his escape, Jacques planned to rob a moneychanger’s shop at gunpoint. The botched attempt saw Jacques flee through the Parisian streets, chased by the police. In a moment of madness, Jacques fired his pistol shooting dead a policeman, Jean Vergne. His case went from a robbery to an assault on civil society and a cause célèbre that demanded justice.
Held in custody from 25 February 1954, he was convicted and sentenced to death on 6 April 1957, his twenty-seventh birthday; and on 1 October 1957 he was guillotined. Albeit slowly, those 1,314 days of imprisonment brought about Jacques’ saintly transformation into a modern-day Dismas.
A process of gradual and painful conversion unfolded. Jacques describes his powerful, almost mystical experience of the Spirit of the Lord seizing him by the throat, infusing within him the gift of faith. He repented of his wrongdoing and the crime he committed, and sought, in whatever ways he could, reconciliation with those he had hurt. His prayer and sacramental life intensified, especially after his sentencing.
All this is recorded in his prison letters and journal.
Jacques’ faith in Christ deepened such that he could counsel others to accept the cross in the light of faith, to offer their sufferings and injustices, and hear, like the good thief, the promise of paradise. The day before his execution, Jacques anticipated the joy of heaven. “In five hours,” he wrote, “I will see Jesus.”
What characterized St. Dismas and Jacques Fesch must characterize every disciple: that we have utter confidence in the cross of Christ and the forgiveness flowing from it. Therefore, we too can make our act of faith and renew our act of trust, praying “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
St. Jerome said the good thief was the first to enter paradise with Christ: “His great faith received the greatest of rewards. … The Cross of Christ is the key to paradise.”
In our own moments of despair or doubt, let us venerate this cross with one and the same hope of sharing eternity with so great a king. Let us live in hopeful anticipation that, by God’s mercy, we too will come to the joy of heaven.
Let us approach the hour of our own death with the faith that believes “I will see Jesus.”
The Most Reverend John Wilson is Archbishop of Southwark.
Awesome post! Thank you.