When Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson writes these meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ, he does not separate them into sections or chapters. He writes a harmony of the Four Gospel accounts of these Words; his point of view is always Jesus Christ Our Friend on the Cross. He weaves his meditations of the Seven Ways into a tapestry depicting aspects of the spiritual life in the Friendship of Christ. He constructs a chronology and even narrates the passage of time: he imagines the dialogue of the two thieves and Jesus as occurring about an hour after the three crosses have been raised on Golgotha.
The first thief, the Bad thief, after an hour of agony, is "still absorbed in his own pain, regarding it, contrasting it, turning it this way and that, seeking to adjust it" so he can deal with it; the second thief, the Good Thief, traditionally called Saint Dismas, has become "aware that there is something in this universe besides his own pain."
The first demands, out of that obsession with his own pain, "If thou be Christ, save thyself, and us." Saint Dismas has, with "the mind of a savage child--has been painfully at work" trying to figure out Who is in the center of their agony. He heard that First Word, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" and is thinking about what it meant.
Benson explores the mystery of Grace at work in the Good Thief, "its mysterious operation" and notes that "we know almost nothing, after all our theology, of that divine process; we know a little of its conditions, a fraction of his effects; we have labelled a few by-laws of its working; but no more." Somehow, "there was still in him enough receptivity for Grace to enter."
Somehow, in the midst of his pain, Saint Dismas begins to think that Jesus is not a criminal at all--that His execution is unjust, unlike his own--that Jesus is King--that the "crown of thorns were not wholly a mockery, that the title above the cross was something besides a sneer", so he reprimands the first thief and asks Jesus for something more than relief from their present agony: "Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom."
Because of the simple humility of that request he receives a greater promised than expected: "This day thou wilt be with me in Paradise."
Benson's application of this drama to our spiritual life is that humility is the key. He warns against "self-assertion" in the spiritual life, trying to make individual progress there as we want to in our "worldly affairs", on our own terms, according to our own standards; to "force our friendship on Christ." So, Benson advises, the way to succeed in the spiritual life is to emulate Saint Dismas.
He warns that the "soul", when thinking about any progress in the spiritual life, should remind herself that "not one of her good actions in the past that has been wholly good, for each that has not been done out of a merely natural generosity, has been done largely out of this very love of self; she learns that her "progress," for the most part, has been in the wrong direction altogether, that she has been accumulating merits that have scarcely a touch of meritoriousness, that she has been serving self throughout in those very actions which she had told herself were pleasing to God."
[This unmeritorious merit seems like a corollary to the "unknowing knowing sin" of the First Word of Forgiveness.]
Therefore, we should ask Our Friend Jesus to "Remember me" and when You do "in that day be to me not a judge but a saviour!"
Then Benson starts to turn our direction to the trio of those standing near Jesus on the Cross, His Mother, Saint John the Apostle, and notes that in a way the thief has joined that group. . .
Image Credit (Public Domain): Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, medieval illustration from the Hortus deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg, 12th century
Image Credit (Public Domain): An icon showing Christ (center) bringing Dismas (left) into Paradise: At the right are the Gates of Paradise, guarded by a seraph (Solovetsky Monastery, 17th century).
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