The crucifixion scene is a good image of church. Jesus dies between two criminals. Anyone at this time, looking at that scene, would not have made a distinction between who was guilty and who was innocent. There was just one landscape — God on a cross between two thieves. That is the perennial ecclesial image. Grace and sin, sanctity and pettiness, and fidelity and betrayal, all part of a single horizon.
— Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing