The King, crucified with us wrongdoers

Year C – 34th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe
Luke 23:35–43: “Today you will be with me in Paradise”

Today, the last Sunday of the liturgical year, we celebrate the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. This feast was introduced by Pope Pius XI in 1925, in a historical period marked by the difficulties and turmoil of the immediate post-war years. Pius XI was convinced that only the proclamation of Christ’s kingship over all peoples and nations could guarantee peace. With the liturgical reform following the Second Vatican Council, the feast was placed at the end of the liturgical year, as its natural conclusion.
The Gospel text for today is taken from Saint Luke, who has accompanied us throughout this liturgical year, cycle C.

The Mother of the King and her long travail

Luke opens his Gospel with the account of a double heavenly visitation: one to Zechariah in the Temple of Jerusalem, and the other to Mary in Nazareth of Galilee. To Mary, the angel Gabriel makes a solemn and striking announcement and promise: “You will conceive and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High; the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will reign forever over the house of Jacob, and his kingdom will have no end” (Lk 1:31–33). Son of the Most High and King! His kingship is emphasised three times, and twice it is stated that it will be eternal.

The entire Gospel of Luke unfolds around this promise, carried forward at a pace painfully slow for our expectations and in ways paradoxical according to our criteria.

  • A king at the mercy of the emperor of Rome. Mary is forced to go to Bethlehem to give birth. The Word comes to her aid: David his father was born in Bethlehem!
  • A king who is born in a stable. Yet the Word reminds her that God chose David his servant “and took him from the sheepfolds” (Ps 78:70).
  • A king who must flee from Herod’s murderous fury. The Word of God supports her once more: David too became a fugitive to escape King Saul.
  • A king who goes to live on the outskirts of the kingdom, in a remote Galilean village called Nazareth. And again the Word comes to Mary’s aid: “He shall be called a Nazarene” (Mt 2:23). The Hebrew name “Nazareth” shares the same verbal root naszar, meaning “shoot”, the shoot of David (Is 11:1).
    But then follow thirty long years in which the King works as a carpenter, putting Mary’s faith to the test!

The King who came from afar to claim his Kingdomà

All of Luke’s Gospel is woven around this twofold revelation: Jesus, Son of God and King Messiah.
In the first part, Jesus is proclaimed Son of God by the Father, at his baptism and on Mount Tabor, but only Satan and the possessed recognise him as such.
In the second part of Luke’s Gospel, the Kingdom of God becomes the central theme of his preaching. At a certain point, Jesus sets out on the road to Jerusalem (Lk 9:51) to claim his title as King. As he himself recounts in a parable while ascending from Jericho to the Holy City: “A man of noble birth went to a distant country to receive kingly power and then return” (Lk 19:12). He receives it on the occasion of his “second baptism” (cf. Lk 12:50), the baptism of blood, on the throne of the Cross: “This is the King of the Jews”.

Along the journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, however, Jesus gradually alienates his followers, who were expecting quite a different kind of king. There is one last enthusiastic attempt by his fellow Galileans to proclaim him king—his triumphal entry into Jerusalem—but it fails immediately. The religious and political leaders soon regain control. And the crowd of his supporters, intimidated and disappointed, simply watch, waiting to see what will happen next. His disciples do the same.
Thus, a king without a kingdom, without subjects, without an army or lieutenants. The king will find himself alone!

A king targeted by temptation

His title of Son of God had been tested three times by Satan: “If you are the Son of God…”. Now the “appointed time” arrives for the return of the Adversary (cf. Lk 4:13). Indeed, the devil renews his attack three more times, through three protagonists of the crucifixion: the religious leaders, the soldiers, and one of the wrongdoers: “If you are the Christ, the King of the Jews, save yourself.”
If, in the first series of temptations, Jesus drove the devil away with the Word, now he does so with Silence. Yes, he speaks three times: but the first and the third are addressed to the Father (Lk 23:34.46), and the second is spoken in response to the plea of the second wrongdoer.

A king with only one subject

“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. He replied, Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” Astonishing! This wrongdoer is the only one to recognise Christ’s kingship and becomes the first citizen of his Kingdom.
According to certain authors, the dialogue between Jesus and the second wrongdoer is not a mere detail added by the evangelist, but the climax and central point of Luke’s account of the crucifixion (J.A. Fitzmyer and W. Trilling). In this sense, it becomes the synthesis and pinnacle of Jesus’s mission according to Luke’s Gospel: “For the Son of Man came to seek out and save what was lost” (Lk 19:10).

Apocryphal tradition (the Gospel of Nicodemus, a 4th-century apocryphon) gives the so-called good thief the name Dismas, placing him on the right of Jesus, while the other, who insulted him, would be called Gestas. And Dismas becomes… Saint Dismas, very popular in the Middle Ages. The Church celebrates him on… 25 March, a date linked by tradition to the death of Jesus! “A saint at once!”, by direct decree, is the first act of the King: “Truly I tell you: today you will be with me in Paradise”! Not even John Paul II achieved such a feat, despite popular acclamation!

“Today you will be with me in Paradise!” Saint Luke is the evangelist of “today”, semeron (ten times, eight of them on Jesus’s lips). This is the last occurrence of that temporal adverb. On Jesus’s lips, it becomes his supreme word. It is the today of mercy which introduces us into the eternal TODAY. A word therefore full of hope and consolation, for Dismas and for us, since this “today” still continues (Heb 3:13). Indeed, “God again sets a certain day—today” (Heb 4:7) for each one of us. How could we fail to make use of it?

Gestas or Dismas?

The name Gestas, in a somewhat imaginative interpretation, could mean, from the Latin gesta (heroic deeds). Dismas, on the other hand, would mean “sunset”, from the Greek. Gestas and Dismas could reflect our humanity, two opposing ways of conducting one’s life.

We are all “wrong-doers” and, sooner or later, we find ourselves in some way on the cross. And then we have only two alternatives: to place our trust in the works of our own hands, or to entrust our life into the hands of God. We can be like Gestas and look back on the “deeds” of our past: at times proud of our achievements, but more often disappointed and embittered. Or we can act like Dismas: look towards the cross of the King and implore with trust: Jesus, remember me! Jesus, remember me! Only he can fill our sunset with serene light!

Fr Manuel João Pereira Correia, mccj



Fr. Manuel João, comboni missionary
Sunday Reflection
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Our cross is the pulpit of the Word