Are You at Least as Good as the ‘Good Thief?’

 

Christ the King 2025 (C): This homily was given on November 23, 2025 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I. by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Luke 25:35-43.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Christ the King 2025]

How good a Christian are you?  Are you at least as good as the “Good Thief?”

That might sound like an odd question, given the fact that this man was a Christian for less than 3 hours of his life; but he definitely made the most of his brief earthly discipleship!  As the old saying goes, he “seized the moment”—in such a way that he now serves as an example of faith to all of us.

We hear about this man and his conversion in just one Gospel—the Gospel of Luke—and only in a very few verses of that Gospel (the ones I read a couple of minutes ago).  But—amazingly—we learn an awful lot about him in these few verses.

First of all, we see that he wasn’t someone who formed his views based on majority opinion.  As he hung on the cross, he was surrounded by many people who were openly hostile to Jesus: the Jewish religious leaders, the Roman soldiers, and even his fellow thief.  They far outnumbered the few—like St. John and our Blessed Mother—who were there in support of our Lord.  But all those opposing voices didn’t stop this man from submitting himself to Christ. 

Think for a moment about how you form your beliefs on the hot button issues of the day.  Do you accept the majority opinion uncritically?  I would say that many (perhaps even most) people do!  They don’t often realize it, but they think just like the secular media “programs” them to think.  That’s why I always laugh when I hear someone say, “Catholics are brainwashed (i.e. by the Church); they don’t think for themselves.”  The truth of the matter is: most of our society is currently brainwashed; and real, committed Catholics are among the few in our culture who actually have minds of their own and think clearly!  They don’t accept what CNN or Fox news says, just because CNN or Fox news says it.  They dig deeper, learn more, and seek out the real truth.  The only Catholics who are brainwashed are those who allow themselves to be brainwashed by the world!

Because he thought for himself and wasn’t unduly influenced by all the negative voices around him, the Good Thief was willing to defend our Lord publicly by rebuking the thief on the left.  When was the last time you defended your Catholic faith?  Or maybe I should rephrase that question: Have you ever defended your Catholic faith?  I remember one of the teenage girls who came to our Thursday night youth group for almost four years (and learned a lot in the process) saying to me that she loved it when she had the opportunity to defend the truth to her friends and to others at school.  She said her attitude was, “Bring ‘em on!  I’m ready.”  I liked that attitude, because it told me that she was one of the few people around who had actually thought matters through for herself and accepted the truth; consequently, her convictions ran deep—as they should have.  The Good Thief would have heartily approved.  You know who else had that attitude?  Charlie Kirk—God rest his soul.

This man who hung on the right side of our Lord also had the proper perspective on himself; in that respect he’s also an example for us.  He knew he wasn’t perfect, and he wasn’t afraid to admit his sin.  When he rebuked the thief on the left he said to him, “We have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes.”  What a different world it would be if every Catholic were that honest in the confessional!

The Good Thief had the right perspective on himself, which is why he admitted his sin; but he also had the right perspective on Jesus, which is why he didn’t despair!  He knew that somehow and in some way Jesus was the answer to his present problem.  He recognized Jesus as a king (even though our Lord didn’t look like a king as he hung there on the Cross); he affirmed his belief in Jesus’ kingdom (even though he didn’t fully understand the nature of that kingdom); and he believed that Jesus could somehow change and cleanse him so that he would be worthy of living there.  This led him to say the beautiful prayer which expressed his deep conversion: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  Jesus responded, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”  Bishop Sheen’s famous comment on this text is always worth repeating.  Sheen said, “This thief died a thief, for he stole Paradise; and Paradise can be stolen again!”

Any discussion of the Good Thief must also include a reference to the way he responded to his suffering.  Everybody suffers; it’s part of the human condition.  The all-too-typical response to suffering was exhibited by the thief on the left, who turned away from God in bitterness and anger: “Are you not the Christ?  Save yourself and us.”  Here we have a selfish man who was only interested in his own comfort.  As Bishop Sheen used to say, all this thief wanted was to be taken down from the cross, probably so that he could go back to his old, dishonest way of life.

On the other hand, the Good Thief—who suffered just as much—responded to his cross by allowing it to bring him to conversion!  He saw his suffering as a path to something greater—which it was!  And once he heard those words from Jesus—“Today you will be with me in Paradise,”—I’m quite certain he had a great joy in his heart, a joy which strengthened him in the midst of the intense physical pain he was experiencing. 

This is an example we need to follow as individuals—and also I would say as a nation.  I was hoping and praying it would happen after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, but unfortunately it didn’t.  That national suffering, unfortunately, did not lead to a national conversion—nor have the many acts of violence against innocent people—especially children—that have occurred since then in places like Newtown, Connecticut and Parkland, Florida and most recently in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  We will know if it ever does happen, by the way, because when a genuine national conversion does take place, our laws will begin to change.  That will be the telltale sign.  Our laws will begin to change such that innocent human life will finally be respected from natural conception to natural death.  The media will also begin to clean up its act and stop filling people’s minds with violent and sexually-perverse images.  And God and his moral law will be invited back into our families, our schools and our other cultural institutions. 

Many years ago, there was a television show on the air called, “It Takes a Thief.”  For a national conversion to take place here in the United States of America, it will take not just a thief, it will take MANY thieves: that is to say, it will take many Christians who are at least as good as the Good Thief was.  Let’s pray today that WE will be among that number. 

The Importance of our Unity with the Holy Father

 

(Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome: This homily was given on November 9, 2025 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Ezekiel 47:1-12; 1 Corinthians 3:9-17; John 2:13-22.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Dedication of the Lateran Basilica]

On this feast day every year, my first thought (believe it or not) is almost always about the popular game show Jeopardy—because I think this could be the subject matter of a question that a lot of contestants would get wrong. If the host of the show said, "The answer is: The first major Christian basilica built in Rome, which functions as the pope's cathedral," I think 9 out of 10 contestants would respond by saying, "What is St. Peter's Basilica?"

But that would be incorrect.

The correct response is: "What is the Basilica of St. John Lateran?"

We normally associate the Holy Father with St. Peter's, and that’s quite understandable. We do that because Peter was the first pope, and because in recent centuries popes have lived in close proximity to St. Peter’s and have celebrated many important liturgies there. But every diocesan bishop has a cathedral (including the Bishop of Rome), and the cathedral of the Holy Father is actually St. John Lateran, which is why today's feast has so much meaning.

It reminds us of our unity with the Holy Father.  It reminds us of our unity with the Holy Father in the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Faith.  It’s really a day for us to thank God that we’re Catholic—that we are part of the one, true Church—the Church that Jesus Christ established 2,000 years ago; the Church that Jesus equipped with all the graces people need to attain eternal salvation.  Those of us who are cradle Catholics can take all this for granted quite often, because we’re so familiar with it.  I think that sometimes converts and those outside of the Church need to remind us of just how blessed we are as Catholic believers in Jesus.  Back in 1996, for example, the well-known advice columnist Ann Landers wrote a column which proved to be rather controversial.  She began it with the important question, “Do you have any idea when your religion was founded and by whom?”  She then listed a number of different religions, Christian and non-Christian alike.  Among the Christian religions she mentioned were Lutheranism—she said that one was founded by Martin Luther in the year 1517. Anglicanism, she rightly noted, was started by King Henry VIII in 1534; the Methodist church, she said, was begun by John and Charles Wesley in England in 1744.  She went on to mention several other Christian groups—among them Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Baptists.  But it’s what she said about Catholics that startled many of her readers, especially her non-Catholic ones. She said—and these are her exact words: “If you are Roman Catholic, Jesus Christ began your religion in the year 33.”

Ann Landers (God rest her soul; she died in 2002) was absolutely correct!  She was Jewish, but she understood something that many baptized Catholics don’t seem to understand or have sadly forgotten.  She understood how blessed we are as Catholic Christians to be part of the spiritual family which Jesus Christ established in this world by his passion, death and resurrection—the spiritual family through which our Lord gives us his word in Sacred Scripture; the spiritual family through which we are taught the fullness of God’s revealed truth (the truth that can set us free); the spiritual family from which we receive the sacraments—the seven sacred, efficacious signs that help us to know God and love God and serve God in this life, so that someday we will live forever with him in his eternal kingdom.

The importance of this—the importance of being united to the Holy Father and the Church—comes through clearly in our 3 scripture readings this morning.

Did you notice that a different temple is mentioned in each of those passages that we heard a few moments ago? In the Ezekiel text the temple mentioned is the temple in Jerusalem (which prefigures the Church today), From that temple Ezekiel sees water flowing.  The water serves as a symbol of God’s saving grace.  In the gospel Jesus calls his own body a temple when he confronts his enemies after driving the money changers out of the temple in Jerusalem.  Predicting his passion, death and resurrection; he says, “Destroy this temple (meaning the temple of his body), and in three days I will raise it up.” And in today’s second reading St. Paul says that we as individuals are the Lord's temples.

So what's the Lord's message to us in these 3 Bible passages?

I would say that he's reminding us here that the grace of salvation comes from the temple (the temple of Jesus' body, sacrificed for us on the Cross), through the temple (the temple we call the Church) to the temple (the temple that each of us is). 

Salvation is from the temple (Jesus), through the temple (the Church), to the temple (us). 

The Church is key in the process, which is why we should thank God from the bottom of our hearts that we are united to the Holy Father as members of the Church—the one, true Church that was founded by Jesus Christ, and through which we are saved.

And it's why we should pray for the conversions of all those who aren't members of the Church at the present time, because the Lord loves them as he loves us—and he wants to save them too.

Thank God for Purgatory!

 

(All Souls’ Day 2025: This homily was given on November 2, 2025 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Daniel 12:1-3; Romans 6:3-9; John 6:37-40.)

 [For the audio version of this homily, click here: All Souls 2025]

 

The very fact that we have an All Souls’ Day on the liturgical calendar of the Church reminds us of the importance of praying for the dead.  It also serves to remind us that purgatory is real—because if purgatory isn’t real, there’s absolutely no reason whatsoever to pray for the dead!  If our deceased relatives and friends are already in heaven, they don’t need our prayers; and if they’re in hell, our prayers will not—and cannot!—help them.

And yet, many Catholics have trouble embracing this important doctrine of the faith.  In some cases, this may be because they’ve been challenged by some of their Protestant friends, who have said to them, “Why do you Catholics believe in purgatory?  The word purgatory isn’t found anywhere in the Bible!  Don’t you know that?”

True enough.  Of course, neither is the word Trinity found anywhere in the Bible—and yet every true Christian (Catholic and Protestant) believes that there are three Divine Persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) in the one, true God.

The bottom line is this: the word Trinity is not found in the Bible, but the truth about the Trinity is most definitely found there!  For example, there are many New Testament passages (like Colossians 2:9 and John 10:30) in which the divinity of Jesus is clearly affirmed.  And in certain verses of Acts 5 and John 15 (among others), the divinity of the Holy Spirit is witnessed to and revealed.

The Blessed Trinity, therefore, is merely the non-biblical term the Church uses to express the truth about the inner life of God which is revealed to us in the Bible.

Along the same lines, purgatory is the word the Church uses to speak of the “final sanctification” after death which is experienced by some of those who die in the state of grace.  Here’s how the word is defined in the glossary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: Purgatory is “A state of final purification after death and before entrance into heaven for those who died in God’s friendship, but were only imperfectly purified; a final cleansing of human imperfection before one is able to enter the joy of heaven.” 

Please note: It’s for those who die “in God’s friendship”; it’s not a “second chance” for those who die in the state of mortal sin.  The notion that it’s a “second chance” is a common misunderstanding of the Church’s teaching. 

And, as was the case with the Blessed Trinity, there are also many Biblical passages which point to the existence of purgatory: 1 Corinthians 3:10-15 is one example. That’s the text where St. Paul speaks about certain souls who are saved after passing through a purifying fire (fire, of course, is the traditional image for purgatory).  Other important passages are Hebrews 12:14, where the Biblical writer tells us to “strive for that holiness without which no one can see the Lord”; Revelation 21:27 which tells us that “nothing profane shall enter [the kingdom of heaven]”; and 2 Maccabees 12:38-46, where the sacred author commends Judas Maccabeus for offering prayers and sacrifices for the dead. 

Again, the only reason such prayers and sacrifices could possibly be effective is if purgatory exists!

Let me share with you now a very good imaginative exercise through which you can help people (especially your anti-Catholic friends) to see the need for purgatory.  I came across this a number of years ago in an article by Benjamin Wiker which was printed in the National Catholic Register. 

Wiker rightly notes that many of us have trouble seeing our own need to be “cleaned up” before entering God’s kingdom, but we have no trouble whatsoever recognizing the faults of others.  (As Jesus would say, we have a much easier time seeing the speck in our brother’s eye than the plank in our own!)

Consequently, if someone we know is having difficulty believing in purgatory, a simple solution is to ask the person to imagine himself as the gatekeeper of heaven, in charge of the eternal destinies of others. 

Remember, since he doubts the existence of purgatory, that can’t be an option for him when he makes his judgments.  Every person who approaches him must be sent either directly to heaven or directly to hell.

Of course, what’s really interesting is when you put yourself in the position of the gatekeeper. 

Try to imagine yourself in that role, as I now read to you a direct quote from Ben Wiker’s article:

“Your first day on the job and who should show up but one of your co-workers, Fred, the generally friendly but irritating office gossip.  To the flames?  Into eternal bliss?  He isn’t really evil; he’s more like a slightly grating noise that, while not loud, distracts and agitates until it seems to fill the room.  With Fred, forever, in heaven?  The thought makes you shudder.

“And isn’t that your neighbor, Heather Finwinkle?  Oh, what a hell heaven would be if you had to listen to her drone on and on about her petty problems, world without end.  That tedious, whining voice!  That theatrically doleful look of hers, continually glancing to see if you’re properly sympathetic!  An eternity next to her?  You can’t even stand being next door!

“And here comes Uncle Sid and Aunt Ethel, the ruin of every family gathering!  Should they be let into heaven as is?  An eternity like last Thanksgiving?  Or the Christmas before last, decked with their same old fights, deep-rutted grievances and fingernails-on-the-chalkboard peccadilloes poisoning the holiday air?  A few hours with them twice a year feels like an eternity.  You break out into a cold sweat.”

Do you see the problem yet?  I’m sure you do!

As Ben Wiker puts it, “If we are really honest about other people, we would not want them in heaven [as they are].  We rightly grasp that nearly everyone we know is an unfit companion for eternity.  We can’t really consign them to eternal torment, yet with their annoying habits, tangle of little vices, tiresome concerns, tedious self-absorptions and lack of depth, we’d like to excuse ourselves politely from them and live forever on the far side of paradise.”

Of course, as Wiker rightly notes in the next paragraph of his article, if we could really be honest about ourselves, we would realize that WE are one of these troublesome people for someone else (and perhaps for nearly everyone else). 

Consequently, they’d have the same difficulty judging us, that we would have judging Fred, Heather Finwinkle, Uncle Sid and Aunt Ethel!

This is why purgatory is such a blessing!  In purgatory, all that petty, annoying, sinful stuff is finally burned away, never to return; and what ultimately remains is a purified, transformed person: the loving, holy person that God created each of us to be in the first place.

Yes, it is possible to bypass purgatory altogether.  Some extremely holy men and women have probably done so when they’ve died (these are people, no doubt, who suffered a great deal during their earthly lives).  But even if we, and all our relatives and friends, are forced to pass through this state on our way to eternal bliss, it will be well worth it.  In fact (as hard as this may be to believe) we will actually be happy to experience purgatory, even if it involves some pain!  Because—think about it—without purgatory, life in heaven would really be no better in certain respects than life here on earth.  It’s only because of purgatory that heaven is, for lack of a better term, heavenly!

Which is why I say, “Thank God for purgatory!”    

 

The ‘Humanity’ of the Saints

 

(All Saints’ Day 2025: This homily was given on November 1, 2025 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12a.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: All Saints 2025]

There were two meditations in the Magnificat this week which give us some insight on the feast we celebrate in the Church today, the Solemnity of All Saints. The first was from a German spiritual author named Ida Friederike Gorres, who died in 1971.  She wrote, “The saint is the most important person in the world because the saint is the decisive answer to the big riddle: What is a human being?  The saint is the terrifying statement: humans are sanctificabilis, ‘holy-able’ [in other words, ‘able to be made holy’]. … The human is created and called to be perfected in such holiness and to exist in it for eternity.”

We’ve all heard the expression, “He’s only human.”  Many of us—probably most of us—have used that expression in casual conversation at some point in the past. Think about it for a moment: In what circumstances is that line usually spoken?  When do we look at another person and say, “He’s only human; she’s only human”?  Well, sometimes it’s when the person makes an innocent mistake—a mistake they weren’t expected to make.

But even more frequently that expression is used when someone commits a sin—often a serious sin. 

A man is caught in adultery, for example, and some of his buddies will say, “Poor Bob.  He just couldn’t say no.  And that’s understandable, because he’s only human.”

A woman loses her temper on the job, and some of her coworkers will say, “Joan usually keeps her cool, but she was under a lot of stress the other day.  That’s why she lost it like she did.  It just goes to show that she’s only human.” 

We use the adjective, “human,” in situations like these, as if to imply that to be truly human means to commit sin.

But that’s not true!  And today’s feast—as well as the quote of Ida Friederike Gorres that I just read to you—illustrate the point perfectly!  Today in the Church we honor all the saints—the canonized and the uncanonized alike.  These are men and women who died in the state of grace and who are now living in eternal glory with Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.  They show us and the world that we human beings are, to quote Ida Friederike Gorres, “sanctificabilis”.  We have the potential, in other words, to be sanctified—to be made holy—to live a more “truly human” life—and that’s the case regardless of what our past has been like.  From this perspective we’d have to say that to be human in the way God intended us to be is to be free of sin.  That actually means that the only fully human person who ever lived was Mary, our Blessed Mother. (Jesus, of course, was a divine Person so he’s in a different category altogether)

But, in spite of the fact that we’re not perfect like Mary was, we all have the potential to grow in our sanctification and holiness as the saints did.  St. Maximilian Kolbe reminds us of this in the meditation of his that was in the Magnificat this past week.  Here, among other things, he notes the importance of really desiring to be holy.  That’s key.  I’ll give St. Maximillian the final word in my homily today:

As Henri Joly says, “the Church has numbered in the ranks of saints not only monks, along with princes and princesses, kings and queens, emperors and empresses, but also merchants, teachers, greengrocers, farmers, shepherds, lawyers and doctors, bankers and clerks, beggars and servants, craftsmen, shoemakers, carpenters and blacksmiths.”

The rather widespread notion that the saints were not like us is simply false.  They also were subject to temptation, also fell and got up again, felt oppressed by sadness, weakened, and paralyzed by discouragement.  However, mindful of the words of the Savior: “Apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5), and those of St. Paul: “I have strength for everything in him who strengthens me.” (Phil 4:13), they did not rely on themselves, but, putting all their trust in God, after every fall, they humbled themselves; they sincerely repented, cleansed their soul in the sacrament of penance, and set down to work with even greater fervor.  In this way, their falls served them as steps toward an ever greater perfection ...  When St. Scholastica asked her brother St. Benedict what was needed to achieve holiness, she received this reply: “You must want to.”

May all of us at this Mass today be among those who “want to”—among those who truly and sincerely want to achieve holiness—among those who truly and sincerely want to be saints.