The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: S. Luke
Christ answered S. Bridget when she prayed for a penitent sinner who had no means of confession, in these words: “He laments because he has none to hear his confession ; tell him that the will is sufficient. For what benefited the thief on the cross ? Was it not his good will? Or what opened heaven to him but his wish to desire good and hate evil ? What makes hell but an evil inclination and inordinate concupiscence ? ” This is found in the sixth book of the Revelations of S. Bridget, chap. 115. See further, T. Reynaud in a learned work he wrote on the change of the thief into an Apostle — where, chap. xvii., he says, “ He formed figurative honey bees, which they gathered from the meadows of the holy thief.”
Ver. 43. — And Jesus said unto him. Verily I say unto thee, This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise. That is, in a place of pleasure where thou mayest be in the beatitude and beatific vision of God, i.e. To-day I will make thee for ever happy ; I will make thee a king reigning in the kingdom of glory with me this day. So S. Cyril of Jerusalem (Catechet. Lect. c. 13) ; S. Chrysostom (Hom. ii. de Cruce et Latrone) ; S. Gregory of Nyssa (Serm. on the Resurrection ) ; S. Augustine (Tract. 111 on John). He explains paradise by heaven, that is celestial beatitude. It is certain that Christ on the day on which He died, did not go up to heaven with the thief, but went down into the Limbus Patrum (S. Augustine Lib. ii. de Genesi ad litt. chap. 34; and Maldonatus by paradise here understand Abraham’s bosom), and imparted to them the vision of His Godhead and thus made them blest, changing the order of things ; for He then made limbus to be paradise, and the lower parts the upper, so that hell should be heaven. For where Christ is, there is paradise ; where, the vision and beatitude of God, there, heaven. For, as to what Euthymius and other Greeks say, denying that the souls of the saints see God before the judgment and are happy: by paradise they understand an earthly place ; that to which Enoch was carried. But it cannot be so— for it is of the faith that Christ, shortly after His death went down in infernum — that is, the limbus of the Fathers, but He did not go into any earthly paradise. It is, moreover, uncertain whether, after the Deluge, there be any earthly paradise remaining. But grant that there be such, it is the happy and joyful habitation, not of souls, but of bodies only. Hence it is plain from this passage, against the Greeks, Calvin, and the other innovators, that the souls of the saints, when thoroughly purged from sin, do not sleep till the day of judgment, but there behold God, and are beatified by a vision of Him.
Moraliter. Observe here the liberality of Christ, who exceeds our prayers and vows. The thief only prayed Christ to remember him when He came into His kingdom. Christ at the same time promised him a kingdom, that he might reign in it as a king. “This day,” says Eusebius of Emissa, in his “Homily on the Blessed Thief” — “as if He would say, O my faithful companion and one only witness of so great a triumph, dost thou think that I need to be so earnestly entreated to remember thee? this day shalt thou be with Me in paradise.” And again, “Christ when placed in the yoke (patibulum) as an arbiter between the two condemned, rejected him who denied, and received the one who confessed ; on the latter He bestows a kingdom, the former He leaves in hell. Let us then believe that He will come to judge, whom we see to have already on the cross exercised judgment.” This is that most sweet answer of Christ to the thief which Fulgentius (Serm. nov. 60), calls “ the testament of Christ, written with the pen of the cross.”
Lastly, the name of this most blessed thief is said to have been Dismas, for some chapels are found, in the name of “ Dismas the Robber.” His day in the Catalogue of Saints is the 25th March, for on that day he seems to have suffered, and Christ in consequence on the same day. For we find in it, “At Jerusalem, the commemoration of the holy thief who confessed Christ on the cross, and who therefore merited to hear ‘This day shalt thou be with Me in paradise.’”
Ver. 46. — Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit. The Arabic has pono, Tertullian depono (cont. Prax. cap. xxv.). The Hebrew word Hiphid means the same as our “ commend.” “My Spirit.” S. Athanasius in his work De Human. Nat. cont. Apollin. says, “ When Christ said on the cross, Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit, He commends all men to the Father, to be, by Him and through Him, restored to life ; for we are members, and those many members are one body, which is the Church. He commends therefore all who are in Him to God.” Christ therefore, according to S. Athanasius, calls men His soul and spirit. What then ought we not to do to profit and save souls, that we may keep as it were for Christ, His soul and spirit? So S. Paul to Philemon and Onesimus, “His bowels.” “He gave His life,” says S. Cyril, “into the hands of His Father (Lib. 11 on John chap. xxxvi.), that by this and through this, as a beginning, we might have certain hope of this, firmly believing that we shall be in the hands of God after our death.” So Victor Antiochus on S. Mark, “ This recommendation of Christ tends to the good of our souls, which, when freed from the bodies previously inhabited by them, He gave by these words, as a kind of deposit, into the hands of the living God.” And Euthymius : “God did this for us, that the souls of the just should not henceforth go down into hell, but should rather ascend to God.” He cites Ps. xxxi. 5, when David, afflicted and in danger of death, spoke as much in his own person as in that of Christ and said, “into Thy hands I commend my spirit.” And, from this, the Church daily uses the same Psalm and verse, and sings it in the Compline at night, to teach us, when we retire to rest, to commend our souls to God, because at night we run many risks of sudden death. The dying use the same words, as did S. Nicholas, Louis King of France, and S. Basil. S. Basil did it in the presence of angels, who brought him away ; as S. Gregory Nazianzen testifies in his oration on him. S. Stephen also cried, “ Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
By these words we testify — 1. That at our birth we received our souls, not from our father and mother, but from God alone ; and that we therefore give Him back the same, as His own creatures. 2. That we believe that our souls do not die at our death, but survive and are immortal, and return to God who gave them and who will judge them. 3. That we believe in the resurrection of the flesh. For in death we commend our souls to God that He may keep them, as it were as a deposit, and restore them again at the resurrection to our bodies. 4. That in the last agony which we undergo, most bitterly, from the devils, we implore the assistance of God, that in giving back our souls to Him, we may overcome and triumph over the devil. Hence many think that each of us has his own peculiar devil, who appears to the dying in some terrible form, and tempts them to despair, and to other sins, as he did to S. Martha and others, but not to all. S. Ephrem seems to think this in his sermon on those who sleep in Christ. S. Chrysostom (Horn. 34 on S. Matt), and others whom our own Lorinus cites on Eccles viii. 8. Many think the same of Christ. Hence Eusebius (Demonstrate Lib . iv. cap. uli.) understands Christ’s words, Ps. xxii. 12, “ Many strong bulls of Basan have beset me round,” of devils whom Christ saw, mocking Him on the cross as a criminal and wicked, and insulting Him for His crucifixion and impending death. Habakkuk seems to support this idea, iii. 5 : “ Burning coals ” (diabolus) went forth at His feet; and S. John, xiv. 30 : “The prince of this world cometh, and he hath nothing in Me.” Christ lays down His Spirit therefore into the hands of God, certain that no one can sever Him from it. For God is a most faithful and strong protector. So S. Jerome on Psalm xxxi. 5, “Into Thy hands I commend my spirit.” That is, “ into Thy power.” This example the Church received from Christ, and S. Stephen followed it. The saints when departing, use the same words; as the following: “They commend their souls to the faithful Creator for His good acts ; ” our Lord said this, when hanging on the cross, commending His Spirit to the hands of the Father as being to receive it again at the resurrection.
Symbolically , Didymus in his Catena on Psalm xxxi. “The spirit is threefold — 1. Our thought. 2. Our soul. 3. Our conscience. These three we ought to commend to God.”
And having said thus, He gave up the ghost. The Syriac “ He said this, and ended,” His life, that is. The Arabic, “ And when He had said this He gave up His Spirit.” This was a certain sign that He was the Son of God the Father, who was called upon by Him, and that the Father heard the cry of the Son and received His soul.
“For when He had said, ‘Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit,’ then, at last, He suffered death to come to Him.” Says Euthymius, on Matt, xxvii : “ As certainly knowing that the spirit, placed in His hands as a deposit, the Father would keep securely, and would give back in the resurrection on the third day. Firm in this hope He gladly and with alacrity rendered up His Spirit to the Father.”