Were it not for the observance of Passion Sunday, today would have the Feast of the Annunciation.
However, did you know that today is the feast day of the “Good Thief”, known by tradition as St. Dismas?
Here is his entry from the Martyrologium Romanum:
2. Commemoratio sancti latronis, qui, in cruce Christum confessus, ab eo meruit audire: “Hodie mecum eris in paradiso”.
Can you imagine, even through that kind of suffering, to hear those words?
“Today you will be with me in paradise.”
Think: Last Rites.
Our Lord gave to us in Holy Church the ordinary means for our salvation.
We have the sacraments and the Church’s teaching on faith and morals.
No matter what sort of sins we have committed, Our Lord is ready for us with unbounded mercy. Holy Church is the refuge of sinners and it is precisely for the likes of us that He came to live and to die. He died between two thieves for company, after all.
Let us show gratitude to the Lord for all His good gifts by using the sacraments well, by hearing and accepting the Church’s teachings, and by upright lives full of good works.
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I’m distressed! I always start a nine month novena in honor of the Virgin of the Incarnation on the Solemnity of the Annunciation. Has it been moved to Monday?
@Faith
It has in my parish.
I am fond of St Dismas. Such a touching interchange between St Dismas and Jesus at the crucifixion. There is hope for us all if we strive for humility.
Also St Dismas is helpful for being locked out of your car or house!
Truly one of the best examples of repentance — “can you not see that we have earned our punishment?”
Tina in Ashburn-
That was a bit irreverent. And if you are locked out of the house and can’t get back in you can bury a statue of St. Joseph in the front yard and just sell the house. I am convert and have never warmed up to Catholic Voodoo, it makes me a bit nauseous.
One of the things I love about Christ’s mercy to Dismas on the Cross is that it is a “last minute conversion story”. Now, we cannot hope for such things, but it does prove that one is given grace up to the end of our lives, unless we are totally closed to Christ and His Life. I find it encouraging.
If one wished to observe a votive office of Saint Dismas (sometime after Lent), for either Mass or the Divine Office, and in either form of the Roman Rite, from where in the Common of Saints would the texts come from? Common of Holy Men?
I’m so happy to see this post, Father Z!
St. Dismas is the saint whose name I chose when I was received as an adult convert to the Church. I thought it fitting as tradition teaches that he was a thoroughly wicked man who repented at the last, possible minute, showing that no one, even me, is beyond God’s grace.
Is not the feast of Saint Dismas being on March 25th tied with a tradition that Our Lord was crucified on March 25th?
From The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ By Bl. Anna Catherine Emmerich
http://books.google.com/books?id=JD2cHhzyxj4C&pg=PA178&lpg=PA178&dq=Blessed+Catherine+emmerich+and+Dismas&source=bl&ots=ecPI9zR0li&sig=Y-ZHXIWOpgtCRrlPJ6cd1CrAMQk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=wl5vT63EN4r40gG3w_zNBg&sqi=2&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false
The thief placed on the left-hand side was much older than the other; a regular miscreant, who had corrupted the younger. They were commonly called Dismas and Gesmas, and as I forget their real names I shall distinguish them by these terms, calling the good one Dismas, and the wicked one Gesmas. Both the one and the other belonged to a band of robbers who infested the frontiers of Egypt; and it was in a cave inhabited by these robbers that the Holy Family took refuge when flying into Egypt, at the time of the massacre of the Innocents. The poor leprous child, who was instantly cleansed by being dipped in the water which had been used for washing the infant Jesus, was no other than this Dismas, and the charity of his mother, in receiving and granting hospitality to the Holy Family, had been rewarded by the cure of her child; while this outward purification was an emblem of the inward purification which was afterwards accomplished in the soul of Dismas on Mount Calvary, through that Sacred Blood which was then shed on the cross for our redemption. Dismas knew nothing at all about Jesus, but as his heart was not hardened, the sight of the extreme patience of our Lord moved him much. When the executioners had finished putting up the cross of Jesus, they ordered the thieves to rise without delay, and they loosened their fetters in order to crucify them at once, as the sky was becoming very cloudy and bore every appearance of an approaching storm. After giving them some myrrh and vinegar, they stripped off their ragged clothing, tied ropes round their arms, and by the help of small ladders dragged them up to their places on the cross. The executioners then bound the arms of the thieves to the cross, with cords made of the bark of trees, and fastened their wrists, elbows, knees, and feet in like manner, drawing the cords so tight that their joints cracked, and the blood burst out. They uttered piercing cries, and the good thief exclaimed as they were drawing him up, This torture is dreadful, but if they had treated us as they treated the poor Galilean, we should have been dead long ago.
St. Dismas, pray for us.
The wise thief didst Thou make worthy of paradise in a single moment, O Lord; by the wood of Thy Cross, illumine me as well, and save me.
-Exaposteilarion from the Matins of Great and Holy Friday
Dismas-
I’ll stick with the Gospel even if, as someone said, “God speaks tersely.” Blessed or not, by the time I wade through the ‘private revelations’ of Emmerich et al…. I don’t CARE anymore. Each extra ‘detail’ diminishes me horribly in some obscure way. Does anyone else feel this way?
Dismas, the Dolorous Passion and her other volumes remind me of a Dicken’s novel where everyone is somehow connected and spectacular coincidences wrap everything up together. I’m not sure about the veracity of the book, but it has always been a good Lenten reflection for me. St. Dismas, pray for us.
Faith, don’t worry. We Byzantines never transfer the Annunciation. So you can start your novena.
cwilla1: I was just thinking the same thing — at our Byzantine Catholic parish today, we celebrated both the Feast of the Annunciation & the Sunday of St. Mary of Egypt.
Tomorrow, a group of us will gather outside the local IVF clinic as we have for several years in honor of the Feast of the Annunciation (we usually gather on the Feast, but moved it a day since it fell on a Sunday this year) to pray for an increase in respect for human life & for the lives lost.
“There must be some way out of here” said the joker to the thief, “there’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief. Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth. None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.”
“No reason to get excited”, the thief he kindly spoke, “there are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate. So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late”.
Fr. Barron on B. Dylan:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L0Tckg686L4
digdigby: No, asking St Dismas for help when locked out of car or house is not irreverent at all, and has gotten me speedy help more than once. St Dismas is also a wonderful patron for those in prison.
I have also asked St Joseph for help for many things, help with finances, selling a house, raising my son – he is a wonderful, warm and loving saint. Silent but effective.
The saints want to help us, and their help is reflected by the type of talents they exhibited here on earth.
Dismas, thanks for the quote. I had heard that story of St Dismas’ healing as an infant, but forgot the source. I’m wondering what the Easterners/Byzantines stories of Dismas are too – there must be some details us Westerners have not heard.
My pleasure Tina. You may have also encountered this in The Life of the Blessed Virgin by Bl. Anna Catherine Emmerich. I remember more detail being given in her revelation of the Flight into Egypt regarding St. Dismas’ infant healing but couldn’t find a reference on-line to copy and paste here.
pj_houston, thanks for the youtube link, I hadn’t seen it until now. Fr. Barron never ceases to amaze.
San Dimas, a town here in southern California, near where I live is named after St. Dismas. May he and the blessed saints in Heaven pray for us. +JMJ+