The ‘Now’ of Salvation
“Today you will be with me in Paradise.”
From “now is the day of salvation” to “today you will be with me in paradise,” we make the sacred journey called Lent. Every year, the Lenten season begins on Ash Wednesday with a reading from St. Paul to the Corinthians:
“We appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says:
‘In an acceptable time I heard you,
and on the day of salvation I helped you.’
Behold, now is a very acceptable time;
behold, now is the day of salvation.”
Paul is capitalizing on the significance of the present moment and God’s presence in it. Though we are still moving through time one minute, one hour, one day at a time, God views us from all eternity in what theologians sometimes call the “eternal present” or the “eternal now.” When Jesus painstakingly calls out to the man crucified beside him, he is both passing through time with that repentant criminal as the Incarnate Word and standing in eternity as the unbegotten Son of the Father.
When Jesus says “today you will be with me in paradise” to Dismas, he means Good Friday 2000 years ago. When our scriptures exhort us that “now is the day of salvation” at the beginning of Lent, it means Ash Wednesday of 2026. And yet, both Jesus on the cross and the words of scripture also mean more than a particular 24 hour cycle of sunset to sunrise back to sunset. They point us upward into the today of God’s perspective.
That might sound like just another semi-eloquent reflection without much purpose, but it is a useful realization. Now that Ash Wednesday has passed and we’re working our way through Lent, we can sometimes get bogged down in it. We can sometimes feel like the “today” of paradise will never arrive and the “now is the day” of repentance and conversion will never end. But remember that, for God, it is all one day, all present. He sees you both in your unenviable suffering weakness and in your eternal radiant glory in heaven. He also sees how your radiant glory in heaven is so vast and endures for so long (eternity) that the moment you’re feeling right now - the listlessness and hopelessness and half-hearted attempts to keep going - it will seem as nothing in comparison. If we can use our imagination for just a moment… if we can tap into the kind of meditative and thoughtful prayer that enables us to visualize things from God’s perspective in the eternal today, the endless now, it really does help. That kind of spiritual exercise can pull us out of ourselves long enough to see the lies of the enemy that our present darkness is all there is.
So, continue to seize the “now” of salvation and repentance and let the promised “today” of paradise fuel the fire of hope that is so necessary in this life. Especially when the fast-day seems to drag on, when you just can’t stand how much longer you have to wait before you can have that steak or hamburger, there is a temptation to disconnect from the present moment. On some level, there is a survival mechanism at work. From what we’ve learned about trauma, a suffering overload can definitely push us to withdraw from what’s actually happening so as to save some portion of our long-term sanity.
The problem is that that survival mechanism, like the rest of our human nature, is somewhat damaged by Original Sin and the Fall. Even in situations which do not warrant that kind of disassociation, we are too quick to resort to it. Have you ever found yourself doomscrolling, binging a show, or getting lost in a book for hours and then coming back to reality with a dazed sort of confusion? “What happened to me just now?” It’s one thing to get caught up in a good story - that can be restful - but that haziness or confusion or even anger at returning to yourself is a sign that what you’ve done is not rest, it’s withdrawal. You may even have caught yourself openly thinking or saying “I just want to stop existing for a few moments” when you reach for the dissociative action.
While such escapism offers the surface-level illusion of relaxation or even the more insidious lie of “saving” you by helping you survive stress, it never delivers on that promise. There is a place for recreation and rest. Workaholism, excessive seriousness, a lack of willingness to play and engage in amusing things - these are problems because a healthy human being needs joy and play and lightheartedness. They are actually ways of engaging with reality and goodness on different levels. These are ways of filling the present moment. But the kind of numb disassociation we’re all familiar with is different. That is a temptation to flee reality itself. That is an attempt to flee the present moment.
Whatever your Lent looks like at this point, consider these words of Jesus from the cross and the words of Paul to the Corinthians. Consider how your Lenten practices can help you to lean into the present moment to encounter the God who is already there. Let fasting cut out the things that offer false escape and numbness. Let prayer fill the uncomfortable empty moments, even if it’s with incomprehensible longings. Let almsgiving turn you outward from dread and towards the soothing power that comes from loving others even in the midst of our poverty and suffering.
In the joys, God is there. In the pains, God is there. And because he is there, you need not fear that you will be stuck in that moment or that it will destroy you. Stand with courage in the face of those moments knowing they simply cannot be empty or meaningless or alone. God who is beyond time but also in time speaks these words to you: Now is not the time to be afraid because “now is the day of salvation.” Today is not the day to lose hope because “today you will be with me in paradise” if only you stay with me one “today” at a time.
