A Reflection on the Second of the Seven Last Words of Jesus

A Reflection on the Second of the Seven Last Words of JesusWritten and Delivered by Bing KimpoSan Lorenzo Ruiz Parish, 10 April 2009

The Bible is often called The Greatest Book ever written. It’s not difficult to understand why. Like any great book, be it by Shakespeare or Nick Joaquin, its writings are rich enough to offer reflections that differ or deepen as you read them again at a later time in life. For this afternoon’s reflection, I’d like to focus on the man we now have come to know as The Good Thief – and his interaction with Jesus Christ at about this time on that Good Friday.

All of us can relate to The Thief. To begin with, at some point in our lives, I’m quite sure that all of us have sinned. I confess: I’m a sinner – and a repeat offender at that.

And there of course is that other similarity. All of us also seek redemption. All of us sinners, I am sure, also want to be saved.

What then can we learn from The Good Thief, whose dying plea “remember me when you enter the Kingdom” leads to Christ replying “I assure you, today you are with me in paradise”?

To me, happily, this means that forgiveness and salvation are available to us. All we have to do is ask for them – even at the last moment of our lives.

Sometimes however, we forget this.

We lead our lives compartmentalizing our faith, separating the spiritual from the secular, separating our Church from our state, separating our faith from our everyday life in the “real world” that we then forget or, worse, don’t even believe that we can turn to God in our moments of despair. I am constantly guilty of this. On many occasions, it seems that I have programmed God to be pretty much like a marathon showing of my favorite cable TV crime drama CSI - present only on Sundays.

The Second of these Seven Last Words reminds us that God is always with us 24 hours a day, seven days a week, ready and willing to offer forgiveness and salvation. And as The Good Thief has inspired us, all we have to do is to ask.

If I remember right, Ninoy Aquino was once interviewed by the televangelist Pat Robertson about being imprisoned during Martial Law: how was he able to survive torture and solitary confinement? Ninoy said that he turned to God; first questioning Him – why are You allowing this to happen to me, when I am doing what is good for my country and the Filipino people? – then; getting angry – why are you allowing me to rot in jail when the thieves are getting away with the rape and pillage of the Philippines? – and then; finally, in prayer, repentance, surrender and acceptance of God’s Will. In that interview Ninoy admitted, “if God did not exist, I would have invented Him”. I bet that the peace with God that he found in prison was the grace that allowed him to brave the bullet that bought us our freedom.

Not all our lives are as dramatically significant. Yet everyday, all of us go through our own forms of torture. To me, this torture comes in the form of difficulties at work and business, the pressures of meeting financial obligations, the challenge of managing relationships with people around me. When these “real-world” concerns come together, it’s easy to dismiss God as irrelevant.

But as I’ve grown older, made and learned from mistakes, survived close calls and become humbled by life and living, I tell you there is a certain reassurance that comes from just holding the rosary beads in my right pant pockets. And every morning, I try to say the words that my old high school teacher taught me to pray, “Dear Lord, help me to remember that there is nothing that can happen to me today, that You and I together cannot handle.”

If you listen to the words of that very quick prayer, “Dear Lord, help me to remember that there is nothing that can happen to me today, that You and I together cannot handle”, you can almost hear them being said by The Thief. In his own way, The Good Thief taught us to pray.

“Dear Lord, help me to remember that there is nothing that can happen to me today, that You and I together cannot handle.”

Amen.