Who are the intelligentsia?
Every age has its intelligentsia, and by the intelligentsia is here meant not the educated, but those who have been educated beyond their intelligence.
A sponge can hold so much water; a person can hold so much education. When the point of saturation is reached in either, the sponge becomes a drip, and the person a bore. All intelligentsia are proud because of the alleged superiority that their learning gives them. Their judgment of others is based on what they know rather than by conscience.
What impact does the Cross of Christ make upon them?
One needs only to go to their intellectual progenitors to study their reaction. The fourth word addressed to the Cross came from the intelligentsia of the time — the chief priests, the scribes, and the Pharisees: ‘‘He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the king of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. He trusted in God; let him now deliver him if he will have him; for he said: I am the Son of God” (Matt. 27:42–43). The intelligentsia always know enough about religion to distort it; hence, they took each of the three titles that Christ had claimed for Himself, “Savior,” “King of Israel,” and “Son of God,” and turned them into ridicule.
“Savior”
Poor fools! Of course, He cannot save Himself. The rain cannot save itself if it is to bud the greenery. The sun cannot save itself if it is to light a world; the soldier cannot save himself if he is to save his country. And Christ cannot save Himself if He is to save His creatures.
“King of Israel”
That title the crowd gave Him after He fed the multitude and fled into the mountains alone. They repeated it again on Palm Sunday, when they strewed branches beneath His feet. Now that title was mocked as they sneer: “If he be the king of Israel, let him come down from the cross.”
“Son of God”
Irreligious forces have their holiday in moments of great catastrophe. In war time, they ask: “Where is thy God now?” Why is it that in time of trouble, God is always put on trial and not man? Why, in war, should the judge and the culprit change places as man asks: “Why does God not stop the war?”
There is something of the mockery of hell in their sinister, diabolical language. Mockery is the greeting of hell, for having turned against God, souls in hell turn against one another, as man becomes a wolf to man. A man literally consumes every other man; one lost soul preys fiendishly on the soul of his neighbor. The one who is nearest is always the one who is farthest away. It is the law of hell that one hates his neighbor. As criminals, when caught in the net of justice, turn against one another, so those who stumble into the realm of eternal darkness, gloat over the misery of every other soul in the region of death. Thus did Christ hear Himself mocked! They do not know that they are already lost. They think He is. Therefore, they, the really damned, mock One whom they believe is damned. Hell was triumphing in the human! Truly this was the hour of the power of the devils of hell.
Why does not he who is the morning star put out the darkness of this hour? Because this is a moment when He wills to make atonement for the sins of men. The essence of sin is twofold: it involves a turning from God, and a turning to creatures. He who is without sin now wills to feel the two effects of sin. Because sin involves turning to creatures, He suffers at the hand of men: because sin involves a turning from God, He permits Himself to feel that divine abandonment, as in the midst of rasping mockery He cries with a loud voice:
“My God! My God! Why hast thou abandoned me?”
This is His answer to the intelligentsia.
Think not that the cry of abandonment meant that He who takes upon Himself the sins of the world, is not the Son of God. God could not be abandoned by God.
The Word made flesh was having recourse to His own words. The poet was reciting His own poetry. It was the poetry of redemption. The courts of justice, the mobs, the unrepentant, the intelligentsia had now done all they could to break Him down, by throwing back all His love in His face, but that great royal love remains unbroken. For in the very dark moment when He felt the isolation and abandonment that sin merited, He in His human nature calls on God.
The way back to God for the intelligentsia is here indicated from man’s side and from God’s.
From Man’s Side
On man’s side, that cry “My God” is the antithesis of the pride of the intelligentsia. It is a cry of humility and primordial obedience. Having arrived at the lowest depths of loneliness, man still asks for the right of being human. It is the confession of a duty-bound child; a prayer so subservient that man continues to seek God even in the darkness of abandonment. Here Christ, taking on man’s sin, asks God to deal justly with a creature predestined to be a child, and to open the door to the prodigal again. Sinful man is knocking! Adam hid after his sin. God asked: “Where art thou?” Now the new Adam lays hold of Adam’s loneliness of soul and asks God: “Where art Thou?” This is the foundation of religion and the way of salvation to all the intelligentsia: by becoming obedient; by making a total surrender to God; by acknowledging creaturehood; by pleading for restored fellowship.
That cry was the hope of man. It was the denial of the chaotic amidst chaos! We too can take our whys to God!
Then follows the beautifully haunting realization that it really was not God who abandoned us; it was we who abandoned God. Adam hid from God after his sin — so does man. God never really abandons man! Christ in His human nature was never separated from His divine nature. Because man is made for God, he feels sin as abandonment. It would be like a man who refused to eat saying: “O Food, why hast thou abandoned me?” Or parched lips of a man walking from a spring saying to the spring: “Water, why hast thou abandoned me?” As the stomach needs food, as parched lips need water, and the mind needs truth, so man needs God. We refuse to drink and then wonder why we are thirsty; we refuse to love God and wonder why we are unhappy.
From God’s side
If the way back to God on man’s side is by the acknowledgment of creaturehood, from God’s side, the reconciliation is effected through love.
To bear sin meant to go on loving even in the midst of a crucifixion. I can go on sinning despite His love, for I am free. But at the same time, when I see Christ still loving me even when I crucify Him; when I see Him still praying to God for me, even when I abandon Him, and never losing faith in me though I lose faith in Him, by that very fact I am made penitent, for how can I go on sinning in the face of love like that? I may not be at the end of my journey, but I am at the end of my rebellion. I now see the nature of sin and cry: “Why am I abandoned?” I see the nature of God and cry: “My God, my God.”
If the redemption of man were done without cost, it would insult us, for no man with a sense of justice wants to be “let off.” It would insult God, for the whole moral order founded on justice would be impugned. The Cross is the eternal proof that no sin is forgiven through indifference.
May it not be that the modern hatred of religion is to a great extent determined by the way men live? Do not men, in the end, delude themselves by making a creed fit the way they live, rather than making the way they live fit a creed? Is not mockery of religion but a vain attempt to ignore? Why is it the intelligentsia are more interested in destroying faith in others than in giving others their own incertitude? You have told others that to believe in God is foolishness, but what wisdom did you give as a substitute? Why do you never think of making others better, but only “wiser” according to your own judgment?
Take an hour off tonight and meditate on the answer of Our Lord to the intelligentsia of His time. For all their mocking there was an answer — the total, complete surrender to God — the smiting of pride into nothingness. “And every height that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). As you examine your conscience, ask yourself:
Are you your own creator? Do you owe what is deepest in you to no other? Have you any more right than a rose to say there is no life beyond you? Is the freedom of your soul self-originating? Have you never done anything wrong in your life, and do you feel no need of atoning for it?
When, therefore, in the darkness, your soul feels disquieted, and your conscience haunts you, think not that this is due to psychological explosions from an unconscious mind; it is rather the call of God.
As you lie awake at night and ponder over your sins, for the darkness brings out your own darkness; as you mourn the loss of relatives or friends and for the moment ponder on the problem of death; as you feel stirred by the purity, sacrifice, and faith of others, even when you ridicule; as you try to throw off a thousand qualms of conscience a day — ask yourself what these promptings really are!
They are actual graces: divine solicitations, beckoning calls of the Shepherd to lost sheep.
Prodigal Catholic 
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