Luke 23:43

Verse 43. I say to thee: This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise; that is in a place of rest with the souls of the just. The construction is not, I say to thee this day, and so forth, but, thou shalt be with me this day in the paradise. Witham.—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. Challoner.—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. Saint Augustine—S. Cyril, of Jerusalem, says he entered heaven before all the patriarchs and prophets. Saint John Chrysostom thinks that paradise was immediately open to him, and that he entered heaven the first mankind.—Tom. v. homil. 32.