Jesus, Remember Me

This is a computer-generated transcription that has been included to make the homily searchable.  It has not been verified by the author. 

“If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.” It’s shocking on this feast of Christ, the King to have this gospel from the crucifixion. When Jesus’ kingship is being mocked, His enemies feel that they’re about to make sure that He will never be king, and they think that they’ve won. And it often feels like that way today. It often feels like the enemies of Christ are winning, that His kingship is farther and farther away from this earth. And as we celebrate this feast of Christ, the King, we’re also celebrating today, this the anniversary of our little Mission of Divine Mercy, our 24th anniversary, which is an occasion for us to give thanks to God for leading us through all these years, and to give thanks to you all and so many other people who have been part of this long journey, this long mission. And so today is a day of thanksgiving for us. And you know that recently we began publishing these messages, the Lord said, opening the time of the reconquest. And so, I think this little mission, this poor little mission, is a small part of His plans for reconquering His kingdom, reconquering it through the cross, the king who conquers through the cross and through faith. And that’s what He’s called, our community in a special way, faith. And that leads us back to this gospel today. So, Jesus is crucified between two criminals and the one, the tradition says that the name of the one was Dismas. And so, let’s try to put ourselves in a place of Dismas. We don’t know much about, well, we don’t know anything, hardly about his childhood, of whether he had a good childhood, whether he was a victim himself growing up, we don’t know, but what we do know is now it’s all over. Now he’s condemned, tied to a cross, dying in torture, not dying as a martyr, but dying as with the shame of a criminal, alone, except for his partner in crime. And what was he feeling right now, certainly pain, humiliation, maybe regret, maybe anger, hatred, maybe despair that his life has been wasted and now it’s too late. It’s all over. It’s not the way that he wanted it to end, I’m sure, but he has no choice, and nobody else cares what he wants anyway. But there is someone else there, someone who, it seems, just happened to be there, Jesus of Nazareth. So just these crazy circumstances of these last days have put them one they called a great rabbi, a prophet. I don’t think he expected to find Him there, but what he realizes, perhaps, is that Jesus is suffering even more than he is. Jesus is not tied. Jesus is nailed to the cross. Jesus is hated more, treated worse. And it was hard to believe that just a few days ago, there was this huge crowd as Jesus was entering into Jerusalem. Everybody wanted to be close to Him, praising Him and acclaiming Him. Then everybody wanted to be close to Him. Now, almost nobody wants to be close to Him. And Dismas suddenly finds himself there, close to Jesus, because neither of them can go anywhere else. Such a weird situation, Dismas with Jesus. Even think of the images when, you know when the images that so many images that have been done of the crucifixion, the greatest moment of, or at the core of the gospel, and right next to Jesus, we see Dismas. And so, these last days have been like a chaos, a tornado of evil and pain that have led to this situation. It seems like just a random situation where they’ve been thrown together, but there Dismas hears these words, very surprising words. In fact, there’s a lot of surprises in this gospel. A lot, I think we forget how surprising this gospel is. Dismas hears Jesus say, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Forgive? How can somebody be thinking about forgiveness when they’ve just been nailed to the cross unjustly? And Dismas sees the mother of Jesus there, when everyone else has fled, she’s there close to Him, and she’s dying too. And maybe Dismas thinks of his own mother and the heartbreak that he’s caused his mother. And so, in this, also, Dismas is very surprising. Again, we’ve grown used to hearing this, but it’s so surprising. He says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Think of that. He’s talking about Jesus as about to enter His kingdom. A lot of people are mocking Jesus right now; if you’re the king of the Jews, save yourself. And they’re saying it as a as a mockery. Some King, he’s abandoned even by His own disciples. What type of King? Even if he could have been king, he can no longer be king. He lost his opportunity. He wasted it. Now it’s too late. Yet somehow at that moment in which it just seems like a cruel mockery to even talk about Jesus as King, somehow at that moment Dismas senses that Jesus really is the king, a different type of King.And not only that, but he believes that Jesus is just about to enter into His kingdom. Think of that. Dismas sees Jesus dying crucified, and somehow he believes that He is just about to enter into His kingdom. He is dying, exhausted, helpless and rejected. He seems defeated. How can He be about to enter into His kingdom? What led Dismas to make this act of faith when so many others who had been following Jesus for years were losing faith or abandoning Him.  They had believed in a Jesus when Jesus was the powerful, handsome, commanding Jesus, working miracles, healing, casting out demons, teaching like no one else. Then it was easy to believe in Jesus, but there is none of that here. And yet somehow Dismas believed that Jesus was the king. How could he? Maybe, I don’t know, maybe because he had nothing to lose, maybe because he had not created images of what he was going when Jesus began His kingdom. Somehow Dismas in the darkest moment is able to believe. And not only that, but he says, “Jesus, remember me.” Not only does he believe that Jesus is the King who’s about to enter into His kingdom, but somehow, he believes that this Jesus, that he’s never met before, and now he’s dying. I mean, can you imagine that coming up to someone that you’ve never met and they’re dying in torture, and what you say to this person is, remember me. And yet somehow Dismas believes that he can say that to Jesus. Why should Jesus remember him? What if you done for Jesus? Are you worthy? But somehow Dismas thinks that Jesus can and will help him. So that’s also a real witness. What was Dismas sensing from Jesus at that point? It’s a witness to Jesus and His mercy when He’s being tortured. And so, you know, sometimes we can be nice, sometimes to a certain extent, right? But then our patience gets worn out. We’re tired. The other person’s wearing us out. And so, we’re not so nice anymore. I think we’ve all experienced that, when our nice ability has been worn out. And at this moment, at that moment, Dismas knew that there was something deeper than just niceness in Jesus, a mercy is so strong that Dismas dare to ask this to trust. And the other thief is saying, aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us. So, the other thief is asking, “Okay, if you’re the king, well, save us. Save yourself and save us.” But that’s not what Dismas is asking for. He’s been a thief, but now he’s asking for something else. Dismas doesn’t say, Jesus, take me down from the cross, help me to escape death, give me revenge on those who are hurting me. He doesn’t ask for that. He asks for something else. And maybe he’s not even real sure of what it is he’s asking for, but he believes that even beyond death, he can receive it, and he believes that it comes from Jesus. And then Jesus responds, And we know the words, we don’t know the look of Jesus, the tone of his voice, his eyes when he said, “Amen, I say to you, today, you will be with me in paradise.” And again, another shocking surprise. Jesus knows him. He knows all the sins that Dismas has committed. He knows what is in his heart. He knows what he has experienced, what has affected Dismas.. He knows everything. And He says, “today.” He doesn’t say “someday.” That would already be tremendous if He said “someday, but it’s going to take you a long time. Look at all you’ve done. It’s going to take you a long, long time in Purgatory, but someday.” Again, we don’t know. All we know is that Dismas is being condemned. We don’t know how much was his fault. We don’t know how much it was, we don’t know any of that. But what we do know is that Jesus says “today”; that his faith in Jesus and faith in Jesus’ mercy and the extreme promises we know that our Lord, through St Faustina, made extreme promises to those who trust in His mercy, and accept the suffering. Dismas is suffering a lot. Jesus says “today, you will be in Paradise with Me,” and that is enough for Dismas. Dismas doesn’t ask for any proof. How many times do people say, “I won’t believe unless I can see.” Dismas doesn’t ask for any proof. Just seeing Jesus is proof enough for him. He believes that somehow this tortured, dying Jesus of Nazareth is about to enter paradise as king and Dismas today will be with him. The. worst moment in his life, dying alone, condemned in despair, and now at the very end, everything has changed. In just, I don’t know, just a few hours, I guess, he will be entering paradise with Jesus from a life that had absolutely no hope, and probably on the road to hell. And now he is about to enter paradise. God’s mysterious mercy in the midst of so much sin and evil. And so, two great lessons of Divine Mercy. One, it’s a sign that we don’t know all that can happen in the very last moments of a person’s life, even when they no longer seem conscious, even in the last instance, how much can change the whole trajectory of a life which is going down to a life which is rising; the mysteries of Divine Mercy hidden at the very end. And the second lesson is in the darkest moments. And like in situations in which we find ourselves fixed to a cross that is forced in a situation which is not at all what we wanted, which just feels crucifying for us, in which it feels like we’re losing everything, as Dismas was; and even It seems he knew a lot of it was his own fault. Dismas is not completely innocent, certainly, but there is Jesus. And in the darkest moments of our life, in which we’re in a situation which seems to be destroying us that we can’t get away from, that can be the moment in which we find there, Jesus Himself on the Cross with us, closer to us than ever before, join us to him and join us home to His kingdom, to Paradise, to heaven. And so, to conclude our little Mission of Divine Mercy on this day, it’s been I was thinking, it’s 24 years of a mission that God has given us, 24 years of misery. We didn’t put that but 24 years of misery, misery meaning we’re just humans. We’re just sinful humans, with our own weaknesses and struggles and sinfulness. And it’s also misery in a sense, it’s been very, very hard, very hard. But so, mission, which has been misery, but even more has been mystery. Mission, misery and mystery – that is always the sense that there’s something very mysterious in the midst of our littleness and poverty and misery; there’s something very mysterious that the Lord is doing, and we remain little and poor. This mission is still little and poor, in some ways, littler and poorer than ever before because of this very controversial situation, which has caused many to feel that they can’t go with us anymore. And yet, there’s a mystery. There’s a deep, deep mystery, a divine mystery, and I think that’s been the experience of us here, both the misery, that the pain struggles daily, but also a divine mystery, a divine mystery in the cross, because it has been a path of the cross a long, a long way of the cross. But, and a lot of times we carry the cross more like Dismas than like Jesus, right? Jesus is silent without complaining, heroic. I don’t think Dismas carried the cross that way. He was probably complaining the whole way. Right, and that’s often the way we are. And learning to follow Jesus, who was condemned because he denounced the corruption of religious leaders. Christ, the King, the Almighty King of justice, who will punish and destroy His enemies, and who is also the King of Mercy, seeking all the lost sheep. And the conquest is for both to defeat His enemies and to reach out to the lost sheep. So the Mass that we celebrate today, and every Mass makes the sacrifice of Jesus, the very moment of Jesus on the cross that we just read about with Dismas is what we are, mysteriously, mystically transported to that moment through the mystery of the cross, that moment of extreme mercy and extreme divine power, power to transform us. And so today we come to this Mass with Mary and also with Dismas to give Jesus the joy of trusting in His mercy, trusting for ourselves and trusting for all the others who don’t yet know His mercy. “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.” “Truly, I say to you today, you will be with Me in Paradise.” Amen. 

KEYWORDS / PHRASES:
Luke 23:35-43
Colossians 1:12-20
2 Samuel 5:1-3