Scripture Reflection by Cardinal Joseph Tobin

Offered in the wake of President Biden’s December 2024 commutations of 37 federal death sentences, this reflection was part of Catholic Mobilizing Network’s monthly prayer vigil to lament upcoming executions and bear witness to the inviolable dignity of all human life.

Drawing on Luke 23:32–43, Cardinal Tobin reflects on Jesus’ crucifixion as a profound encounter with injustice and mercy. He challenges Christians to see the death penalty in light of the Gospel, recognizing in Jesus’ own execution—and in his merciful promise to the penitent thief—a call to uphold the dignity of every human life, guilty or innocent.

To listen along, skip to minute 14:08.

Reading: Luke 23:32-43 — Jesus and the Two Criminals on the Cross

Reflection:

A friend of mine often observes that the saddest part of grieving a departed loved one is the silence. What we would give to hear the voice of a deceased spouse or parent, child or beloved friend! I think he has a point. I sometimes struggle to recall the final conversation, cherished phone messages and other recordings of that voice. Last words have a unique value, and that value may explain the traditional devotion of Christians to to the last words of Jesus. 

The four Gospels remember seven words—phrases really—attributed to Jesus in his last moment. In Matthew and Mark, Jesus cries out to God. In Luke, he forgives his executioners, even making excuses for them. He reassures the penitent thief and commends his Spirit to the Father. In John, he speaks to his mother and to his beloved disciple, says he thirsts, and declares as “finished” his earthly life and mission. In a single instance he uses the word “paradise”: the passage of Luke that was just read. 

This saying is traditionally called the “Word of Salvation”. According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus was crucified between two thieves sometimes named in literature as Dismas and Gestas. Dismas supports Jesus’ innocence and asks him to remember him when he comes to his Kingdom. Jesus replies: “Amen, I say to you” and then follows with the promise of paradise, the only time that word is used in the Gospels.

Sisters and brothers, I’ve often wondered why the obvious connection between Jesus’ death and capital punishment isn’t referenced more frequently in this discussion. You know that Roman law reserved crucifixion to foreigners and to slaves. A citizen, no matter what she or he did, could not be crucified. That’s why Paul was beheaded outside the walls of Rome while Peter was crucified; Paul was a citizen and Peter was a foreigner. In the logic of the Romans, execution wasn’t simply to kill but it was to terrify. It was to educate people about the power of the state. 

Jesus did not leave behind a reference book with answers to every difficult moral question that would arise in future eras. We don’t know what he would have said about nuclear weapons, for example, or about the manner in which capital punishment is used in various countries today. It’s up to the believing community to interpret the signs of the times in the light of the Gospel. But the connection between his execution and capital punishment in our day seems obvious to me. 

***

I don’t think it’s a stretch to look with interest at another passage in the Gospel. In John 8, 1-11, we find Jesus at the scene of an impending execution, speaking with the condemned prisoner and her accusers. Those accusers, we might already know, seem to forget that the crime in question—adultery—required more than one perpetrator. What does Jesus do? What does he say? Jesus has that peculiar gesture where he kneels, squats down and begins to write in the sand. 

If you, like me, attended parochial school at a certain age, the teacher often told us he was writing down the sins of the Pharisees, that’s why they went away, beginning with the eldest. Archbishop Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, had another interpretation: he said that perhaps Jesus wasn’t writing anything at all. He was buying time so that the potential executioners could understand what they were about to do. 

I think an African Saint by the name of Augustine may have got it right: in his commentary on John 8, 1-11 he says: “What was Jesus doing? Just as the finger of God wrote the Old Law in the harsh unyielding stone of the tablets on Mount Sinai, so now the finger of God writes the New Law in the warm yielding dust of the earth.” Isn’t that beautiful? And isn’t it interesting that, on some of the most ancient scrolls we have of the Gospel of John, that passage of Jesus speaking with the woman is not found? A lot of New Testament scholars think it’s because the community found it scandalous that Jesus didn’t throw a stone.

***

Capital punishment is as old as human civilization, and Christianity is in the curious position of worshiping a man who was sentenced to death by the state. 

It is true that Jesus didn’t explicitly condemn capital punishment. It is true that he was explicitly condemned by it. The nature of Jesus’ death by capital punishment has always made me uncomfortable with its continued use, because if there’s one thing that jumps off the pages of the Passion narratives, especially in Luke’s Gospel, it is that Jesus is innocent—and by association the authorities who unjustly pursued and procured his state-sponsored execution are guilty. 

There’s something enduring about that infamous injustice—of putting an innocent man to death. Modern science and DNA testing have shown how that trend continues. But I sometimes think the very fact that we are capable of putting an innocent man or woman to death, as Jesus was, suggests that human beings should never use the power to do so. 

Jesus’ death teaches us, among so many other things, that we are not God; that when we pass our judgment or impose our will over another human being we will probably get it wrong, because we don’t know the whole story. We get it wrong rather than achieve justice, and rather than achieve justice we destroy it. 

A friend of mine, Sebastian Gomes, has written (1): 

“The crucifixion scene with the penitent criminal at the end of Luke’s Gospel may be the most poignant pro-life statement in the New Testament. 

The self-admitted criminal asks Jesus to remember him when he enters his kingdom. Dying on the cross, Jesus promises him paradise that very day. What does this say about the death sentences procured by the authorities? They got it wrong twice; even when they got it right—in the case of the criminal—they got it wrong. 

In God’s eyes, neither the execution of the innocent man nor of the guilty man is justified. ‘The death penalty is contrary to the Gospel,” Francis says, “because it entails the willful suppression of a human life that never ceases to be sacred in the eyes of its Creator and of which—ultimately—only God is the true judge and guarantor.’ (2)”

*** 

Pope John XXIII, when he was close to death, observed that: “It’s not that the Gospel has changed, it’s that we’ve begun to understand it better.” (3) That famous utterance lingers in my mind as we talk about the death penalty, as we thank God for the commutations of the sentences of 37 [men on federal death row, in December 2024], and pray that the remaining three will receive the same decision from the President.

And we ask ourselves as we pray: what we can learn from the situation today? I think there are two things that the situation is suggesting to us. 

The first is the possibility of this continuing practice in our country being yet another example of the hubris of American exceptionalism: that we seem to know what justice means better than the vast majority of the countries in the world; that we continue to provide a scandal to even countries who are our friends. In the years I served in Rome, I was struck that when a death sentence was commuted in the United States, the lighting on the Colosseum was changed because a life had been spared. If we have a way forward as a country, perhaps it is through the route of humble penitence.

The second is the wisdom of our great friend Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. After President Biden had commuted the sentences of the condemned prisoners in Terre Haute, IN, Mr. Stevenson said: “The question isn’t whether they deserve to die. The real question that we must answer is: do we deserve to kill?” 

I give thanks to God for this monthly vigil that keeps the question alive in our hearts and eventually will bring a just solution. Amen.

— 

(1) “Pope Francis, the death penalty, and the development of doctrine”, Sebastian Gomes, August 2, 2018, Salt+Light Media. https://slmedia.org/blog/pope-francis-the-death-penalty-and-the-development-of-doctrine

(2) Address of His Holiness Pope Francis to Participants in the Meeting Promoted by the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization, October 11, 2017. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2017/october/documents/papa-francesco_20171011_convegno-nuova-evangelizzazione.html 

(3) Quotation attributed to Pope John XXIII on his deathbed on May 24, 1963.