The people stayed there before the cross watching Jesus. As for the leaders, they jeered at him. ‘He saved others,’ they said ‘let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.’ The soldiers mocked him too, and when they approached to offer vinegar they said, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.’ Above him there was an inscription: ‘This is the King of the Jews.’

One of the criminals hanging there abused him. ‘Are you not the Christ?’ he said. ‘Save yourself and us as well.’ But the other spoke up and rebuked him. ‘Have you no fear of God at all?’ he said. ‘You got the same sentence as he did, but in our case we deserved it: we are paying for what we did. But this man has done nothing wrong. Jesus,’ he said ‘remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ ‘Indeed, I promise you,’ he replied ‘today you will be with me in paradise.’

Luke 23:35-43, Jerusalem Bible

At the end of the Catholic Liturgical Year, in celebration of the Solemnity of Christ the King, we are brought back to Calvary, at the feet of the Cross, as one last drama unfolded in the dialogue amongst those who were chosen to accompany Jesus in His act of salvific redemption for us.

Once again, we are reminded that the Kingdom of God is not of this earth, but spans the depth and breadth of the Universe in such expanse and penetrance of time and space, that we cannot but grasp at straws for what is yet to be revealed.

CS Lewis writes in his acclaimed wartime sermon Transposition, “The heavenly bounties by Transposition are embodied during this life in our temporal experience……. It is the present life which is the dimunition, the symbol, the etiolated, the ‘vegetarian’ substitute. If flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom, that is not because they are too solid, too gross, too distinct, too “illustrious with being.” They are too flimsy, too transitory, too phantasmal.”

And so it is, as at Calvary, for the repentant sinner to invoke humility and contrite by, reducing our demands and earnest pinings to the simpliest plead, to “remember me, when You come into Your Kingdom”