When it is said
The service of the Twelve Gospels is Matins of Holy Friday, and parishes usually hold it on Holy Thursday evening.
This hymn comes three times after the eighth Gospel, the reading in which the thief on the cross asks Jesus to remember him.
Where it comes from
No author known
The thief who asked
Two criminals were crucified with Jesus. One mocked Him, but the other told him they were punished justly while Jesus had done nothing wrong. Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom,” and Jesus answered, “Today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:39-43).
A service that keeps coming back to him
In the fourteenth antiphon of the same service the Church asks Christ to count us with the thief, whom He took with Him though his hands were stained with blood. The same antiphon says the thief gave one small cry from his cross and found great faith, and went into Paradise first.
What the words mean
Why “wise”?
The Slavonic books call him the wise thief, and Hapgood’s English keeps the word because she translated from them. The Greek came first and has only “the thief”. Where the Slavonic has “in a single hour”, the Greek has “that same day”, the “today” of Jesus’s promise.
The Scripture in it
Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom!” And Jesus said to him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.”
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.
In Church Slavonic
Разбо́йника благоразу́мнаго во еди́ном часе́ ра́еви сподо́бил еси́, Го́споди,
и мене́ Дре́вом Кре́стным просвети́ и спаси́ мя.
From the exapostilarion of Great Friday, on Azbuka very (azbyka.ru), a Russian Orthodox website.
In Greek
Τὸν Λῃστὴν αὐθημερόν, τοῦ Παραδείσου ἠξίωσας Κύριε,
κᾀμὲ τῷ ξύλῳ τοῦ Σταυροῦ, φώτισον καὶ σῶσόν με.