Ver. 43.—And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.That is, in a place of pleasure where thou mayest be in the beatitude and beatific vision of God, i.e. To-day I will make thee for ever happy; I will make thee a king reigning in the kingdom of glory with me this day. So S. Cyril of Jerusalem (Catechet. Lect. c. 13); S. Chrysostom (Hom. ii. de Cruce et Latrone); S. Gregory of Nyssa (Serm. on the Resurrection); S. Augustine (Tract. III on John). He explains paradise by heaven, that is celestial beatitude. It is certain that Christ on the day on which He died, did not go up to heaven with the thief, but went down into the Limbus Patrum (S. Augustine Lib. ii. de Genese ad litt. chap. 34; and Maldonatus by paradise here understand Abraham’s bosom), and imparted to them the vision of His Godhead and thus made them blest, changing the order of things; for He then made limbus to be paradise, and the lower parts the upper, so that hell should be heaven. For where Christ is, there is paradise; where, the vision and beatitude of God, there, heaven. For, as to what Euthymius and other Greeks say, denying that the souls of the saints see God before the judgment and are happy: by paradise they understand an earthly place; that to which Enoch was carried. But it cannot be so—for it is of the faith that Christ, shortly after His death went down in infernum—that is, the limbus of the Fathers, but He did not go into any earthly paradise. It is, moreover, uncertain whether, after the Deluge, there be any earthly paradise remaining. But grant that there be such, it is the happy and joyful habitation, not of souls, but of bodies only. Hence it is plain from this passage, against the Greeks, Calvin, and the other innovators, that the souls of the saints, when thoroughly purged from sin, do not sleep till the day of judgment, but there behold God, and are beatified by a vision of Him.
ABS' daughter (just moved to town) wanted to bring her husband to meet the Pastor and so he dutifully went steeled for the noise and the questionable sermon. Upon entering the Church, he saw this
and thought, Hey, maybe things have changed. Nope.
What was once a Real Mass has been upended, turned sideways (if not upside down), and has become a loud and proud worship of our own selves with the Pastor promising all in attendance that everyone would be going to Heaven, just like the good thief.
Were the ethos of today's American Catholic have prevailed at Calvary, there would have been a picnic at Calvary and if there had been talk of a Limbus (Today you will be with me in Paradise) Limbus would have had an American anthropocentric interpretation.
