Day 33
One of the criminals who were hanged, railed at Him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong.” And he said, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.” And He said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.” Luke 23:39-43 (From the Eighth Gospel of Holy Thursday Evening)
There is a joke that says: “I have a great joke about procrastination…I’ll tell you later” I am sure most of us have procrastinated about something one time or another. Perhaps it was something we really didn’t want to do, maybe it was something that was going to take a lot of effort or maybe it was something that was going to interfere with our everyday life. Whatever it was, we most likely put it off, for a day or so, maybe forever.
Today’s scripture passage, taken from the eighth gospel reading on Holy Thursday, is in its own way about procrastination. At the service, following the reading of this gospel, a beautiful hymn is sun entitled The Wise Thief” In that hymn we are reminded of the salvation of the good thief and we cry for that same salvation. If we read the scripture passage closely though, we see the way that we should not act from the other thief.
The UN-repentant thief wanted Jesus to save them, right then and there, not from eternal damnation, but from death, so that he could continue the life he was leading. He didn’t want his current life to be ended or interrupted.
The Church teaches us that there will come a time when we will be judged for our actions. We see this in the parable of the Last Judgment. The thing that we do not know is when this judgment will happen. We have no idea when our time of preparation (our time here on earth) will end. We are not graced with the knowledge of the time of our falling asleep in the Lord. The thieves knew, they knew death was coming that day, one way or another. And yet, one of them wanted to put off asking for forgiveness, and seeking the kingdom of God.
It is vital for us not to procrastinate in our spiritual life, in our relationship with God. I am sure there are times that you feel the Church and a Christian life take too much effort, that the Church and a Christian life interfere with the things that we really want to do. And so we tend to put off truly living that Christian life. We tend to procrastinate.
The dangerous part of that procrastination is that we won’t be as lucky as the Wise thief. We will not see Christ’s return or death coming; rather, it will come as a thief in the night. So we must be prepared. We must be ready. We must make the journey of salvation a part of our life every day. There is another saying that goes “Why put off until tomorrow what you can do today?”
Work on your salvation today, each and every day.