Our Lord spoke seven times from the “pulpit of the Cross” – and these are called His seven last words.
In response, those who were on Calvary’s Hill that afternoon addressed seven words to Him on the Cross, thus revealing the seven different impacts the Cross makes on souls.
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The 2nd of 7 possible attitudes toward the Cross = sinners.
There are two ways of coming to God: (1) through goodness (like Mary, who was “full of grace”) and (2) through badness, like the thief on the right, who spoke the second word to the Cross.
The world loves the mediocre but hates the very good and the very bad. The good are a reproach to the mediocre, and the evil are a disturbance. That is why Christ (the very good) was crucified by “the world” with thieves (the very bad).
Here is a supreme instance of the Right Man in the right place: Christ among the bandits; the Redeemer in the midst of the unredeemed; the Physician among the lepers.
At the beginning of the Crucifixion, they both cursed and blasphemed the Savior. But suddenly the soul of one, lighted by fires from that central Cross, turned to a King who was being mocked and asked to be one of His subjects:
“Lord, remember me when thou shalt come into thy kingdom” (Luke 23:42).
Lord, remember me: There was a touch of humor in asking God to remember. God had remembered him before he was born. God had been following his soul down the corridors of time, and now the pursued asks the Pursuer to remember.
When thou shalt come into thy kingdom: How did the thief know Christ had a Kingdom? “Maybe the crown of thorns spoke of a diadem, the Crucifixion of a coronation, the nails of a scepter, and the blood of royal purple.” We can never judge people by the way they are dressed!
No prayer to God is ever unanswered. From the central Cross there flashed back:
“Today, thou shall be with Me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).
Today: Evil has its hour, but God has His day.
Thou: The soul of an outcast is of such value that the Eternal Word addresses him in the second person singular: “Thou.” Thus, we see the foundation of Christian democracy. Every soul is precious in God’s sight. We are all individuals to the Lord.
Shalt be with me in paradise: I wonder why He said “in paradise”? To be with Him is paradise.
Our Blessed Lord shows the supreme instance of bringing good out of evil. God, in His infinite wisdom, had reached deep into the lower layers of humanity and picked out of its dregs two worthless derelicts, and He used one of them as the escort of His Eternal Son.
Why did the thief find salvation? Unlike the self-satisfied and complacent chief priests and Romans, the good thief was disgusted with himself:
“Self-disgust is the beginning of conversion, for it marks the death of pride.”
May it not be that the conversion of the good thief is the key to the conversion of the modern world? Men will return to God, not because they are good, but because they recognize that they are evil. They will come to God through evil rather than through goodness. Or shall we say they will come to God through the devil.
There is only one thing in the world worse than sin, and that is denying that we are sinners. The tragedy of the modern world is that so many deny sin. Never before in the history of the world was there so much evil, and never before was there so little consciousness of it. Talk to a modern man about reconciling his soul with God, and he will say:
“What have I ever done to Him? I let Him alone. Why should He not leave me alone?”
Why does he say this? For the same reason, a healthy man would say to a surgeon who wanted to operate on him: “There is nothing wrong with me. Leave me alone.”
In like manner, if you are your own law, if you set your own standards, and if you are your own god, then it is nonsense to ask to be reconciled to another god. As a man gets more wicked, he understands his wickedness less and less, just as when a man’s fever climbs to a point of deliriousness, he understands his sickness less and less. He may even think himself so healthy that he wants to go to work. A moderately bad man always thinks he is good. We never know we were asleep until we wake up, and we never know what sin really is until we get out of it. Only when you are sick do you ask for a physician; and only when you recognize yourself as a sinner do you ask for your Redeemer. Our Lord said: “They that are in health need not a physician, but they that are ill” (Matt. 9:12).
The perception of guilt is the condition of conversion, as the perception of disease is the condition of remedy.
So long as we think we are good, we will never find God.
We admit sometimes that we are ill-tempered, or that we are intemperate, but will we ever admit that we are proud? We condemn pride so vociferously in others, but we deny that we have ever been guilty. The more conceited we are, the more we hate conceit in others. The more we say, “I am not conceited,” the more we prove that we are conceited. Our pride makes us look down on people so that we can never look up to God. In fact, because our pride admits no law and no authority other than ourselves, it is essentially anti-God. All our other sins can be from ourselves; for example, avarice, lust, anger, and gluttony. But pride comes direct from hell. By that sin fell the angels. It destroys the very possibility of conversion. If, therefore, we can humble ourselves as did the thief at the right, and admit we have done wrong, then out of our creative despair we can cry to the Lord to remember us in our misery! The very moment we stop strutting and posing and begin to see ourselves as we really are, then in our humility, we shall be exalted.
Let us examine our consciences. Let us ask ourselves not how much we know, but how much we do not know; not how good we are, but how bad we are. Let us judge ourselves not by the knowledge we possess, but by our consciences; not by our education, but by our habits; not by our politeness, but by our hearts. As soon as we feel a great void in our souls, and realize that by our sinning we are no longer our own, and acknowledge that we are still thirsty at the border of a well, and admit that we have played the fool and that our follies of the years mount up in their dark arrears, then out of a dark and swampy soul, we cry out with the thief — as all Catholics do when we go to Confession — “Bless me Father, for I have sinned” — “I am a sinner.” Such is the beginning of salvation. The thief died a thief, for he stole paradise. And if we win paradise, we will be thieves too, for we will never deserve what we got — the God of everlasting peace!
Prodigal Catholic 
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