Here�s the Good News

by Editor · April 4, 2007

Executed with Jesus on Jerusalem�s rubbish tip on the hill called Golgotha were two unnamed criminals. One of them, whom tradition has named Dismas, repented for his sinful life and asked Jesus to facilitate his entry into paradise.

His request granted, Dismas became the first man to be redeemed through Christ�s mercy, and so is a model for all of humanity.

It is at once the reassuring and disturbing glory of Easter that through Christ all and any of us have the key to eternal life in the presence of God, if only we ask for it. This notion gives us great hope, for salvation is possible for you and me. But it may also disturb us, for salvation is also open to those whose lives have failed miserably to meet the values our faith calls us to (of course, none of us should feel entitled to believe that our lives at any point meet these values altogether).

Had Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin with their dying breath genuinely repented and sought access to heaven, then God in his mercy would have forgiven their lifetime of turpitude and accepted these posterboys for evil into his loving arms.

Disquieting though it is, this is the bottom line of Catholic doctrine: that God�s love and compassion are limitless, extending to anyone who genuinely seeks it regardless of the depths of the sinner�s past depravities. It is a gift that is ours to accept or to reject.

It is in the act of promising eternal life even to the agents of evil who eventually seek redemption that Jesus Christ through his death on the cross and resurrection from the tomb won the ultimate victory over Satan�the source of all evil, in whichever form one might regard him. This is what we call the Good News.

It is a discomfiting truth that even the most evil of characters have a standing invitation from God to seek redemption and gain access to his Kingdom while staunch defenders of the faith are admonished by Christ himself not to be too smug at the threat of finding themselves at the end of the queue to the gates of paradise.

However, it is not for us to consider who may and who may not access heaven. Jesus made this clear in Luke 6:37: �Do not judge and you will not be judged yourselves; do not condemn and you will not be condemned yourselves. Grant pardon and you will be pardoned.�

In other words, we must first ensure that we ourselves meet the criteria that will redeem us.

As Christians, we are called to spread the message of God�s love and Christ�s conquest of death. Our mandate to evangelise, however, is not intended to boost the membership numbers of the Catholic Church, but to persuade people of the Good News�that divine mercy and salvation is open to them.

We may not be selective in whom we address when we spread the Good News. God loves every person, even those you and I might prefer to disdain. Like a good father, God wishes that all those he loves be with him. Our evangelisation efforts must include those least likely to know that, and most likely to believe, erroneously, that they invariably face rejection from God.

For this reason the Church�s prison ministry especially deserves our admiration and support�especially at this time of the year when we remember the felonious Dismas.