Feast Day: March 25 Canonized: By Christ on the Cross — "This day you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43) Order / Vocation: Lay person — condemned criminal, crucified alongside Jesus at Golgotha Patron of: Prisoners · Condemned prisoners · Those on death row · Penitent sinners · Funeral directors · Prison chaplains · Reformed thieves
"Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." — Saint Dismas, Luke 23:42
The One Sentence That Opened Heaven
He had no time for a long conversion. He had no time for a retreat, for catechesis, for the sacraments as the Church would later develop them, for years of penance and amendment of life. He had hours. The nails were already through his wrists and feet. The cross was already upright. The crowd below was already mocking. He was in agony.
And in that agony, he did something that had never been done before and has never been equalled since: he made an act of faith so complete, so nakedly dependent on nothing except the grace of God and the mercy of the man dying beside him, that Christ responded to it with the only canonization that requires no Congregation for the Causes of Saints and no waiting period and no miracles after death. The canonization happened on the cross. This day you will be with me in Paradise.
He is the patron of everyone who has run out of time. He is for prisoners, for the condemned, for the dying who have spent their lives badly and arrive at the last hour with nothing to offer but the request itself. He is the proof — the most dramatic proof the Gospel offers — that the mercy of God has no lower limit that human sin can reach.
Fulton Sheen said of him: He was a thief to the end — he stole heaven. The line is exact. He had nothing but his request. The request was everything.
What the Gospels Say and What They Don't
All four Gospels record the fact of the two thieves crucified alongside Jesus. Matthew and Mark say both mocked him. Luke alone records the conversion. The apparent contradiction has been discussed by theologians since the early centuries: the most common resolution is that one or both thieves initially mocked Jesus and that Dismas converted during the course of the crucifixion — changed not by a sermon but by what he witnessed in the man dying beside him. What he saw in those hours, the Gospels do not say. What it produced in him, Luke records precisely.
His name appears nowhere in the canonical Gospels. The name Dismas comes from an early recension of the Gospel of Nicodemus — a non-canonical text, portions of which may date to the late fourth century. The name may derive from a Greek word meaning sunset or dying. In Latin and Spanish traditions he is sometimes called Dimas; in some Eastern sources, Rach or Titus. The Roman Martyrology uses no name at all: "At Jerusalem, the commemoration of the holy thief who confessed Christ on the cross and who deserved to hear from him: This day, I tell you, thou shalt be with me in paradise."
The Church has never required the name. The fact is enough.
Why March 25
The Roman Martyrology places Dismas on March 25 for the same reason the Annunciation falls on March 25: the ancient Christian tradition that the Incarnation and the Crucifixion happened on the same calendar date, nine months before December 25. The day God entered human flesh in the womb of Mary is the same day, by this tradition, that the same flesh was nailed to a cross and Dismas turned and asked to be remembered.
The symmetry is not accidental. The Church put them on the same day because it understood them as the same mystery: God's entry into human vulnerability, taken to its logical extreme. The Annunciation is the beginning of that entry. Calvary is its completion. And Dismas is the first fruit of the Passion — the first soul explicitly received into Paradise by the crucified Christ.
The Legend of the Holy Family
One legend — preserved in the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, non-canonical and not required belief — tells that Dismas and his companion Gestas encountered the Holy Family during the flight into Egypt. They intended to rob them. Dismas, moved by something he could not name in the presence of the infant Christ, bribed his companion to let the family pass and protected them. The legend closes with the infant Jesus prophesying to Mary: "In thirty years, Mother, the Jews will crucify me at Jerusalem, and these two thieves will be with me at the same time, Dismas on my right hand and Gestas on my left, and after that day Dismas shall go before me into paradise."
The legend is not history. It is the imagination of the early Church trying to account for why Dismas was capable, at the last hour, of what he did. It is the tradition asking: where did that faith come from? And answering: perhaps he had seen it before, as a child, in the face of a child.
What the Cross Showed Him
Archbishop Fulton Sheen preached on Dismas with the precision of someone who understood exactly what made the conversion extraordinary. Dismas, he pointed out, saw Jesus at his least impressive: not performing miracles, not teaching with authority, not raising the dead. He saw a man bleeding, mocked, weakened, dying the same death he was dying. Every visible evidence pointed against the claim he was about to make. And he made it anyway — not in a moment of religious consolation or felt grace, but in a moment of pure rational faith: this man is innocent, he is a king, his kingdom is real, and I want to be remembered in it.
What he asked for was not rescue. He did not say save yourself and us. He said remember me. He asked only to be held in mind by the man whose mind he had decided was worth holding everything in. That request, and the answer it received, is the entirety of his biography.
Prayer to Saint Dismas
O God, who in the last hours of Your Son's life received a dying criminal into Paradise by the sheer mercy that Your Son is, grant through the intercession of Saint Dismas that those who have run out of time may find that Your mercy has not run out, that those condemned by the world may be remembered by You, and that we who have more time than he had may use it less badly, and arrive where he arrived. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Saint Dismas, pray for us.
| Born | Unknown |
| Died | c. 30 — Golgotha (Calvary), Jerusalem — crucifixion alongside Jesus Christ |
| Feast Day | March 25 |
| Order / Vocation | Lay person — condemned criminal |
| Canonized | By Christ on the Cross — "This day you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43) |
| Patron of | Prisoners · Condemned prisoners · Those on death row · Penitent sinners · Funeral directors · Prison chaplains · Reformed thieves |
| Known as | Dismas · Dysmas · Dimas · The Good Thief · The Penitent Thief · The Wise Thief · Rach · Titus |
| Name source | Gospel of Nicodemus (early recension, c. late 4th century) — possibly from Greek dysme meaning sunset or dying |
| Their words | "Have you no fear of God? We received the just sentence for our crimes, but this man has done nothing wrong. Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." (Luke 23:40–42) |
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