GOOD FRIDAY

Luke 23:32 "Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him."

A hymn of the Community of Taize recalls the words of the thief on the cross:
"Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.
Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom."

An ancient work known as the Gospel According to Nicodemus did not find a place in our canon of Scripture, but it did pass along a tradition concerning the names of the two men who were crucified with Jesus on that Friday long ago, Dismas and Gestas. Dismas was the man who, according to St. Luke, looked to the Man in the middle and said, ‘Jesus, when you come into your kingdom, remember me.’ Gestas, on the other side, spewed bitterness to the end, mocking Christ from his doomed perch. Two criminals were condemned to die on either side of the Man in the middle in whom even the depraved Pilate could find no fault. One of them owned up to his wrongs and begged mercy from the only One who could truly grant it. The other was unrepentant, cursing, hounded no doubt to the depths by his own crimes.

How like the Savior to die as he had lived, among sinners! How characteristic that he should be at once praised and profaned. There on that desolate hill, shaped like a skull, we see the eternal, self-giving love and grace of God and the two responses human beings can make to it. For either we turn in faith to the Man in the Middle, and live, or we turn away to death.