"This day you shall be with me in Paradise"?

[DIERM]

Guess I’m gonna have to die in a state of grace and ask.

Aren’t we all…I have a friend who is a Franciscan Friar and priest, and a retired theologian who keeps notebooks on his bookshelf behind his desk…I once asked him what was in them, and he said “Questions I want to ask Jesus when we meet!”

 

[irenaeuslyons]

Holy Bible (Douay Rheims)
Lk 23:43 • ‘And Jesus said to him: Amen I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with me in paradise.’

Commentary:

Ver. 43. I say to thee: This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise; i.e. in a place of rest with the souls of the just. The construction is not, I say to thee this day, &c., but, thou shalt be with me this day in the paradise. Wi.

— In paradise. That is, in the happy state of rest, joy and peace everlasting. Christ was pleased by a special privilege, to reward the faith and confession of the penitent thief with a full discharge of all his sins, both as to the guilt and punishment, and to introduce him, immediately after death, into the happy society of the saints, whose limbo (that is, the place of their confinement) was now made a paradise by our Lord’s going thither. Ch.

— The soul of the good thief was that same day with Jesus Christ, in the felicity of the saints, in Abraham’s bosom, or in heaven, where Jesus was always present by his divinity. S. Aug.

— S. Cyril, of Jerusalem, says he entered heaven before all the patriarchs and prophets. S. Chrys. thinks that paradise was immediately open to him, and that he entered heaven the first mankind.—Tom. v. homil. 32.

 

[EndTimes]

Yet Christ spent 3 days in hell and when He met Magdalene He said “do not hold on to me for i have not yet ascended to the Father”.
Any thoughts on how this contradiction can be reconciled?

Sure… It’s not a contradiction.

 

[Wesrock]

The Haydock Commentary gives a couple of interpretations that the Fathers preferred.

(1) Paradise refers to Abraham’s Bosom, which is where the righteous dead waited before Christ opened the gates of Heaven.

(2) Paradise refers to Heaven. The thief went immediately to Heaven. Since Christ is God, Christ is also always present in Heaven. Even with Christ descended to the dead, he would also still have been, as God, in Heaven, and the thief was able to be with him there. It’s not like God/the person of the Word vacated Heaven during his time on Earth.