Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion, 2025

When I have a funeral, and the family allows me to pick the gospel passage to be proclaimed, I almost always choose the story about Jesus and the good thief.

We just heard it: Jesus is hanging on the cross beside two men. One of them is sorry for his sins and the other one is not.


And the reason why I choose that Gospel passage is because it gives me and, I hope, everyone else tremendous hope.


Again, the man who is sorry for his sins, dying beside Jesus on the cross, is called the “good thief.”


He is guilty of some crime. That’s the only thing we know about him. And what a sad way to be remembered: We remember nothing good about this man’s past.


But the present, in which he exists in this story, is one of the greatest stories of hope that we can ever hear.


Jesus never met this man beside him and the man never met Jesus. But for some reason he senses how good Jesus is. And for some reason he senses that Jesus can help him somehow. And all he does is call out one single time for mercy; one single time for help from Jesus. And Jesus responds in the most amazing way we could ever hope for: He says to the man whom he just met: “This day you will be with me in paradise.”


That is the power of Jesus’ suffering and death for us: It pays the price completely for our sins.


…May we never lose hope of heaven, because our hope is not based on our goodness but on God’s.




Scripture readings for this day: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/041325.cfm

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