It is odd how you can think you know something and yet miss part of it completely. Of course I know that Our Lord was crucified between two wrong-doers (which is closer, I am told, to the original Greek than the commonly-used ‘thieves’), but I am ashamed to confess that until I read C’s pieces on Theophilus, I had never concentrated on it much.

I knew that in the Arabic Infancy Gospel (23) Titus Dismas was supposed to have been one of a band of thieves who set upon the Holy Family when its members were fleeing to Egypt, and he was supposed to have been the one who prevented them being attacked, but beyond that I had given it no thought.

His fate is one which holds lessons for us all, not least here on Mt. Nebo. Whether, as some say, Dismas and his companion Gestas, were revolutionaries, bandits or even cannibals, they met an end which, according to Dismas they, unlike Christ, deserved. Their lives had led them to the most terrible fate which Roman Law could prescribe. Gestas died as he had lived, showing no respect for others and mocking those who suffered. But Dismas, well, he seems to have had a change of heart which transformed him from being bound for perdition to the promise of paradise with Christ.

We can only say that Grace opened his heart – for his change of prospects begins, as it must begin for each of us, from the heart. As Gestas reviles Christ, Dismas asks whether he does not ‘fear God’ as he is like condition? That is the second stage for us all, an acknowledgement that we are all in like condition. We may not be murderers or thieves, but if we say we have no sin, we are liars.

The third step we all must take is the next one Dismas took – he confessed Christ as Lord, asking to be remembered when He came into His kingdom. That too we must all do. In so doing, Dismas threw himself on the mercy of Christ, confessing his faith that He had the power to forgive Him. To have done that, on the Mt. of Golgotha at that moment – well, what a faith that was. It was also done in humility and supplication, He knew he was not worthy, and he threw himself entirely on the mercy of someone whom the world, and his old companion, was still reviling.

He turned to Christ in humility, repentance and faith, and he was received into the Kingdom – even at that fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour. To what Church did he belong, what baptism had he save one of implicit desire, what penances did he? And yet Christ is clear – Dismas will not be in purgatory, seeing his sins burnt away, he will be, that very day, in Paradise the blessed with the Lord Himself.

So how can we think to understand, restrict, define or weight with the mind of God, or as He weighs? Where, one might think, is the justice in that? Well, God is the Only Just Judge, so let us accept, as well we might, that in the presence of His mercy and Grace, all mortal flesh keeps silence, and in awe and wonder stands.