But his words of blasphemy evoked an unexpected reply, not from Jesus, but from the robber’s companion in crime.

He who is now known the world over as the Good or Penitent Thief, had also come to the end of his life.  He must have heard of Jesus before that day, may even have stood uneasily at the back of the crowd to listen to him teaching.  Now he was close to him for his last hours.  It was a time when a man thinks long and hard: the sands were quickly running out.

He thought what his past life had added up to.  He compared himself with the Man on the central Cross.  How silent he was in the face of the jeering mob!  How out of this world the only words that had passed his lips, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (NRSV, Luke 23:34).