Saint Dismas

Matthew, Mark and Luke all say that Jesus was crucified between two other men, and Luke makes them part of the story from the start: "Now two others, both criminals, were led away with him to be executed." ¹⁶¹⁷¹⁸ At the place called the Skull "they crucified him and the criminals there, one on his right, the other on his left." ¹⁶ Luke does not say which man hung on which side. ¹⁶

What they had done is not recorded. Luke calls them criminals. ¹⁶ Matthew and Mark, in the translation on the bishops' conference site, call them "revolutionaries," and a note on Matthew points out that the Greek word is the one John uses for Barabbas. ¹⁷¹⁸ The word thief belongs to the later tradition, and Pope Francis used it without hesitation: "It is true, he was a thief, he was a crook, he had stolen things throughout his life." ⁵

The Catholic Encyclopedia, describing Roman practice, says crucifixion was the punishment used for those who could not prove Roman citizenship, and was later reserved for thieves and malefactors. ¹

The rulers and the soldiers jeered at Jesus to save himself. Then, Luke says, "one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, 'Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us.'" ¹⁶

The other man answered him. "Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation?" He went on to say that the two of them "have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal." ¹⁶ Then he spoke to Jesus: "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." ¹⁶

The reply is the last thing Jesus says to anyone but his Father before he dies in Luke's account: "today you will be with me in Paradise." ¹⁶ The note in the bishops' Bible observes that the episode "is recounted only in this gospel," and that the words to the penitent thief show how Luke understands the destiny of a Christian: "to be with Jesus." ¹⁶

Matthew and Mark tell it differently. In Mark, "Those who were crucified with him also kept abusing him," and Matthew says the same of both. ¹⁷¹⁸ Matt Fradd, writing for Catholic Answers, reads the three accounts together and concludes that the good thief at first "verbally abused Jesus with the other criminal and the crowd before repenting and asking to be saved." ⁶ That is an inference from the texts, and Luke himself mentions no change of heart, only the rebuke and the request. ¹⁶

No Gospel names him. Catholic Culture calls Dismas "the apocryphal name" of the thief, and notes that it is also spelled Dysmas, Dimas or Dumas. ⁸ The Catholic Encyclopedia speaks of the good thief as "traditionally known as Dismas." ¹

The source is the Acts of Pilate, a book also known by the medieval title Gospel of Nicodemus. ³ In it Pilate sentences Jesus and adds, "let Dysmas and Gestas, the two malefactors, be crucified with you." ¹² The crucifixion scene that follows is Luke's with the name written in: "And Dysmas answering, reproved him." ¹² George Reid, in the encyclopedia, says that scholars assign the work to the middle of the fourth century, that it "gained wide credit in the Middle Ages," and that it "has considerably affected the legends of our Saviour's Passion." ³ The Italian edition of Vatican News likewise traces the name to the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus and dates it to the fourth century. ¹¹

A later section of the same book, which Reid calls an addition, follows him after death. The holy fathers in paradise meet "another lowly man, carrying also upon his shoulders a cross," who tells them he was a robber and that he has come there on the strength of Christ's promise. ³¹³ Catholic Culture's list of the ways he is shown in art includes a man holding his cross and a man "sometimes depicted in Paradise." ⁸

Other apocryphal books give him other names. The Narrative of Joseph of Arimathea calls him Demas, makes him a Galilean innkeeper who "made attacks upon the rich, but was good to the poor," and sets him on the right hand of Jesus with Gestas on the left. ¹⁵

The Arabic Gospel of the Infancy tells a story that became, in Reid's words, "familiar in pious legend." ⁴ On the flight into Egypt the Holy Family falls into the hands of two robbers, Titus and Dumachus. Titus pays his companion forty drachmas to let them pass, and the infant Jesus foretells that in thirty years both men will be crucified with him, "Titus on my right hand and Dumachus on my left; and after that day Titus shall go before me into Paradise." ¹⁴ Reid thinks the book impossible to date but probably earlier than the rise of Islam, and he classes it with the apocrypha. ⁴

None of this is history, and the encyclopedia does not present it as history. It does record one relic. A large portion of the cross of the good thief, it says, "is preserved at Rome in the altar of the Chapel of the Relics at Santa Croce in Gerusalemme." ¹

Saint Dismas is the patron saint of prisoners, and especially of those condemned to death. The Catholic Encyclopedia's article on patron saints lists him for "persons condemned to death." ² The Italian edition of Vatican News calls him the patron of prisoners and of the dying. ¹¹ Catholic Culture's list begins with those condemned to death, prisoners and repentant thieves, and runs on to funeral directors and several towns, without giving an authority for any of it. ⁸

Saint Dismas's feast day is March 25. "His feast day is March 25," Fradd writes, and Vatican News lists "St. Dismas" on that date. ⁶¹⁰ Catholic Culture says that the Roman Martyrology marks his commemoration on the same day. ⁸ March 25 is also the Solemnity of the Annunciation, which is how Catholic Culture heads its page for the day. ⁸

The Martyrology itself is more reserved than the calendars that cite it. In the text the Italian bishops publish, the entry for March 25 commemorates the holy thief who confessed Christ on the cross and heard the promise of paradise, and it does not give him a name. ⁹

Fradd adds a point about his standing as a saint: "Though he has never been formally canonized by the Church, he is believed to be a saint by virtue of Christ's words." ⁶

Pope Francis gave a whole general audience to these five verses in 2016, and he took the thief's three sentences one at a time. The rebuke to the other man shows "the starting point of repentance: the fear of God," which Francis was careful to call a filial respect and "not the dread of God." ⁵ The second sentence is a confession: the good thief "declares Jesus' innocence and openly confesses his own guilt." ⁵

The third is a request, and Francis dwelt on it. The man calls Jesus by his name and asks only to be remembered. "There is so much tenderness in this expression, so much humanity!" ⁵ He asks about the future, and the answer he gets is about that same day. ⁵¹⁶

Joshua Charles, at Catholic Answers, makes a list of what the man actually did in the little time he had: he acknowledged Christ, accepted responsibility for his sins, defended Jesus against the other man's jeers, and asked to be received into the kingdom. ⁷ Charles's point is that the man used what little time he was given. ⁷

Francis addressed part of that audience to anyone "nailed to a hospital bed" or living "locked in a prison," and told them that "no one is excluded from the forgiveness of God." ⁵ Of the thief himself he said that at the end "he managed to steal Heaven." ⁵