Ave Maria Meditations
Jesus and the Thieves –a painting by Michael O’Brien
Artist Commentary: Jesus promises Paradise to the repentant thief. We tend to think that when severe trials come we will suffer with the same courage and love as Jesus did. Or, perhaps as the “good thief” did. Yet we often find ourselves reacting to trials in the manner of the unrepentant thief. Within our hearts is the potential for all three responses. In life’s difficulties we are refined and tested, our hearts are revealed to us, that we might turn and turn again to the One who died for us on the Cross. If we do not succumb to bitterness or despair, or run from what we must learn, we will be with Him “this day in Paradise.”
And From Fr. Bertrand Weaver C.P.: Jesus had prayed at every juncture in his earthly life. Before starting his public ministry, he had prayed in the desert for forty days and nights. He prayed all night before choosing his Apostles. As his Passion was about to begin, he went to the Mount of Olives to pour out his soul in fervent prayer. And now that his Passion is reaching its climax on the cross, his prayer is also reaching its height in fervor and power.
Again Christ is using the cross as a pulpit. He is telling man through his prayer on Calvary that if he is wise, the first thing he will do in time of crisis, in time of stress, difficulty, or temptation, is to pray. Instead of turning to God by a sort of divine instinct at such times, many people wring their hands in utter futility or seek comfort and support in creatures. They act as though God knew nothing about their plight, when the truth is that he has offered them the cross for the precise purpose of bringing them closer to him.
One of the great disadvantages of failing to pray in times of trial is that the failure to pray involves the most tragic of all wastes: the waste of our crosses. One of the three crosses on Calvary was wasted because the second thief, instead of imitating his companion by prayerful acceptance of his trial, rebelled and blasphemed. The Good Thief shows that one of the most salutary effects of immediate prayer in the time of trial is that it causes one spontaneously to offer God the thing which is so difficult to solve or to bear. By prayerfully offering to God whatever is difficult, one attains the main purpose of prayer, which is to unite our wills with God’s will.
+Fr. Bertrand Weaver C.P.
