And Jesus said unto him,
Verily I say unto you, Today shall you be with me in paradise.
Read Chapter 23
Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
He asked the Lord to remember him when he came into his kingdom, but the Lord said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, this day you shall be with me in paradise.” For life is to be with Christ, because where Christ is, there is the kingdom.
“Recognize to whom you are commending yourself. You believe I am going to come, but even before I come, I am everywhere. That is why, although I am about to descend into hell, I have you with me in paradise today. You are with me and not entrusted to someone else. You see, my humility has come down to mortal human beings and to the dead, but my divinity has never departed from paradise.”
And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise. That Isaiah , in a place of pleasure where thou mayest be in the beatitude and beatific vision of God, i.e. To-day I will make thee for ever happy; I will make thee a king reigning in the kingdom of glory with me this day. So S. Cyril of Jerusalem (Catechet. Lect. c13); S. Chrysostom (Hom. ii. de Cruce et Latrone); S. Gregory of Nyssa (Serm. on the Resurrection); S. Augustine (Tract. III on John). He explains paradise by heaven, that is celestial beatitude. It is certain that Christ on the day on which He died, did not go up to heaven with the thief, but went down into the Limbus Patrum (S. Augustine Lib. ii. de Genese ad litt. chap34; and Maldonatus by paradise here understand Abraham"s bosom), and imparted to them the vision of His Godhead and thus made them blest, changing the order of things; for He then made limbus to be paradise, and the lower parts the upper, so that hell should be heave...
The tree brought ruin to Adam. It will bring you into paradise. Do not fear the Serpent. He will not throw you out, for he has fallen from heaven. I do not say to you, ‘This day you will depart,’ but ‘This day you will be with me.’ ” Take heart; you will not be thrown out. Do not fear the flaming sword, because it stands in awe of its Lord.
Through the mystery of the water and blood flowing out from the Lord’s side, the robber received the sprinkling that gave him the forgiveness of sins. “You will be with me in this garden of delights.” Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron
The hands that Adam stretched out toward the tree of knowledge, breaking the commandment, were unworthy of stretching out toward the tree of life to receive the gifts of the God that they had despised. Our Lord took these hands and attached them to the cross, so that they might kill their killer and arrive at his marvelous life. “You will be with me in the garden of delights.” “Remember me in your kingdom.” Since he had seen with the eyes of faith the dignity of our Lord instead of his shame and his glory instead of his humiliation, he said, “Remember me. What is apparent now, the nails and the cross, will not make me forget what will be at the consummation and what is not yet visible: your kingdom and your glory.” Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron
I say to thee: This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise; i.e. in a place of rest with the souls of the just. The construction is not, I say to thee this day, but, thou shalt be with me this day in the paradise. (Witham)
In paradise. That is, in the happy state of rest, joy and peace everlasting. Christ was pleased by a special privilege, to reward the faith and confession of the penitent thief with a full discharge of all his sins, both as to the guilt and punishment, and to introduce him, immediately after death, into the happy society of the saints, whose limbo (that is, the place of their confinement) was now made a paradise by our Lord's going thither. (Challoner)
The soul of the good thief was that same day with Jesus Christ, in the felicity of the saints, in Abraham's bosom, or in heaven, where Jesus was always present by his divinity. (St. Augustine)
St. Cyril, of Jerusalem, says he entered heaven before all the patriarchs and prophets. St. Chrysostom thinks that paradise w...
That flaming, flashing sword was keeping Paradise safe. No one could open the gates that Christ closed. The thief was the first to enter with Christ. His great faith received the greatest of rewards. His faith in the kingdom did not depend on seeing Christ. He did not see him in his radiant glory or behold him looking down from heaven. He did not see the angels serving him. To put it plainly, he certainly did not see Christ walking about in freedom, but on a gibbet, drinking vinegar and crowned with thorns. He saw him fastened to the cross and heard him begging for help, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” … The cross of Christ is the key to paradise. The cross of Christ opened it. Has he not said to you, “The kingdom of heaven has been enduring violent assault, and the violent have been seizing it by force”? Does not the One on the cross cause the violence? There is nothing between the cross and paradise. The greatest of pains produces the greatest of rewards. .
In the beginning, God shaped man, and man was an image of the Father and the Son. God said, “Let us make man to our image and likeness.” Again, when he wished to bring the thief into paradise, he immediately spoke the word and brought him in. Christ did not need to pray to do this, although he had kept all people after Adam from entering there. God put there the flaming sword to guard Paradise. By his authority, Christ opened paradise and brought in the thief.
This cross of Christ holds the mystery of its true and prophesied altar. There, through the saving victim, a sacrifice of human nature is celebrated. There the blood of a spotless lamb dissolved the pact of that ancient transgression. There the whole perversity of the devil’s mastery was abolished, while humility triumphed as conqueror over boasting pride. The effect of faith was so swift that one of the two thieves crucified with Christ who believed in the Son of God entered paradise justified.Who could explain the mystery of such a great gift? Who could describe the power of such a marvelous transformation? In a brief moment of time, the guilt of a longstanding wickedness was abolished. In the middle of the harsh torments of a struggling soul, fastened to the gallows, that thief passes over to Christ, and the grace of Christ gives a crown to him, someone who incurred punishment for his own wickedness.
Until now, one [thief] was the equal in all things of his companion. He was a robber on the roads and always a danger to the safety of people. Deserving the cross, he suddenly becomes a confessor of Christ…. “Remember me, Lord, when you enter into your kingdom.” …Then came the gift in which faith itself received a response. Jesus said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” This promise surpasses the human condition, because it did not come so much from the wood of a cross as from a throne of power. From that height, he gives a reward to faith. There he abolishes the debt of human transgression, because the “form of God” did not separate itself from the “form of a servant.” Even in the middle of this punishment, both the inviolable divinity and the suffering human nature preserved its own character and its own oneness. .
