The fifth group with a distinct reaction to religion are the moderns.
The moderns are those who believe in moderation. They hate excesses, either good or evil; compromise is the very essence of life; they have an “open mind” — in fact, so open that they never close it on anything absolutely right and true; they are what Scripture calls “lukewarm,” but they prefer to call themselves “broad.”
Being skeptical and doubting the very existence of truth, they regard any enthusiasm for religion as a folly. Religion for them is an occasion more often for derision than for conversion; they boast of their objectivity, but it consists merely in surveying all planets but inhabiting none. They love to seek truth but scrupulously avoid the responsibility of finding it; they want to be auditors at all classes, but to be pupils of none; they find it easier to doubt than to examine. They never want to know whether a thing is right or wrong, but whether it is “progressive” or “reactionary,” “liberal” or “contemporary”; they love to make distinctions between the “historical Jesus” and the “Christ of Paul” and say they would be Christian tomorrow if “all the accretions and perversions” were eliminated. They follow that one avocation in life in which there is no apprenticeship — criticism.
What is the reaction of the moderns to the Cross?
We need only go back to their ancestors who addressed the fifth word to the Cross. The Gospels call them “bystanders at the Cross.”
These original moderns loved their puns and their humour at the expense of religion. The occasion for it was the fourth word of Our Lord from the Cross: “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” It was spoken in Hebrew: “Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani” (Matt. 27:46).
The bystanders knew very well what that meant.
But to those who willed to mock, it was a fine opportunity for a pun. Pretending that they understood him to say “Eloi” rather than “Eli,” or “Elijah” rather than “God,” they said:
“This man calleth Elias. . . . Let us see whether Elias will come to deliver him” (Matt. 27:47–49; Mark 15:34–36).
The lance thrust of this word consists in the fact that they make the self-vaunted Messiah summon a man who must come before the Messiah. It was a typical attitude of many who think religion means something else than it actually does: mistaking Eloi for Eli, Elijah for God, religion for social service, contemplation for dreaming, mortification for morbidity, confession for psychoanalysis, and the papacy for politics.
The dilettantes and moderns always think we are calling on Elijah when we are actually calling on God. Their very words indicated passivity, indifference, and false caution: “Let us see if Elias will come to deliver him.” Wait! Take your time! Do not do anything rash! Wait and see what the Church does about Marxism! Wait and see if it will change its marriage laws! Do not be in a hurry to give your soul to God! The difficulties of the moderns are always verbal, never real. Those who remain away from God suffer from confusion of their own making. They think the Church is something other than it is, as the bystanders mistook God for Elijah.
As Our Lord did not answer those who mocked Him in the fourth word, neither does He answer those who mock Him now. The perfect soul never permits itself to be drawn down to the level of those who mock, for “mockery is the fume of little hearts.”
But He did answer them indirectly.
To the bystanders, the dilettantes, the overcautious moderns, He did give the key to salvation: the need of fire for a cause as burning as thirst. There is no pain of the human body comparable to thirst.
He, the God-Man! He Who shut up the sea with doors as it burst forth as issuing out of a womb; He Who threw stars in their orbits and spheres into space; He Who said: “He that believeth in me shall never thirst” (John 6:35); He Who once stood up in the Temple on the last day of a solemn feast and cried out in a loud voice: “If any man thirst, let him come to me, and drink” (John 7:37), now speaks not to God, nor to the executioners, nor to His Mother, but to man.
He asks man for a drink: “I thirst!”
There was genuine thirst there, for no one could be crucified without it. But under that physical symbol of thirst was hidden a spiritual thirst, and St. John, who was at the foot of the Cross, made it known: He spoke that the Scriptures might be fulfilled! What Scriptures?
His own words: “I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink” (Matt. 25:35).
It was, therefore, a thirst to be thirsted for — a thirst for the salvation of souls. While the bystanders were like ice, He was on fire; while they coursed in shallow streams, He launched out into the deep; while they only stand and wait, He plunges in that one cry through both fire and water; while the moderns were saying: “Let us see” Our Lord was answering: “No, be athirst! Be afire! I am come to cast fire on the earth: and what will I, but that it be kindled?” (Luke 12:49).
Religion is not for calculating love. One must love life like wine and drink death like water.
Our Lord chose persons of that kind for His disciples: Sons of Thunder like James and John, who would have called down lightning from heaven on the Samaritans, but whose zeal once rightly directed, truly thundered through the world. He chose hot-blooded, fiery, impetuous Peter, swinging a sword recklessly at night, and yet out of love for God, breathing his last on a Cross upside down, thinking it unbecoming to die like the Lord. He chose Magdalen, passionate and sensuous, the kind of woman who gave her body without giving her soul, and yet the one who, under the touch of Christ’s fiery hand, gave her body in penance to save souls in grace.
There is no place for spineless characters in religion.
“I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would thou wert cold, or hot. But because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:15–16).
Such is God’s disdain for the indifferent. There is more possibility for conversion in a passion wrongly directed than in indifference. Where there is fire, its direction can be changed by God’s grace, so that it will burn upward rather than downward, and thus enkindle goodness rather than vice. But where there is indifference and false tolerance and spineless broadmindedness that looks at all causes and espouses none — there is no chance.
There are many potential saints in prison and many potential devils in the service of God. In both cases, there is thirst: thirst for Satan or thirst for God. And either thirst could be reversed.
Lenin, for example, was a St. Francis in reverse, as St. Francis was a Lenin in reverse. Both started with the idea of violence: Lenin believed in social reform by violence to a class; St. Francis believed in social reform by violence to himself. They were both right in their starting point: violence: “The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away” (Matt. 11:12). It was the direction of that violence that made the difference between the two!
Moderns! Wait not for a proof of your own making as did the bystanders at the Cross. They dictated the terms on which they would accept the divinity of Christ: you dictate terms on which you will accept the divinity of the Church. You are looking for bargains in religion, and there are none. The Church has never yet had a sale on beliefs; it has never compromised on a single divine truth to win a soul. There are plenty of religious shops that have, and that is why today so many of them are ending in bankruptcy.
Our Lord said: “I thirst.” This was the crucified way of saying, “Come to me, all you that labour, and are burdened, and I will refresh you” (Matt.11:28).
God always puts Himself on the attitude of wanting something as an excuse to give us something…. He thirsts for us, only because we need Him so!
The word of Our Lord from the Cross reveals the secret of your unhappiness: it is your moderation.
You have no great loves: you are not on fire; you never thirst. Even we who know the Savior and His Cross have been infected by your passivity. We have become like you — lukewarm. The cohorts of Satan today have more passion for the spreading of evil, than many of the children of God have for the spreading of truth. As Prometheus stole the fire from heaven, so the fires of Pentecost have been stolen from our altars and are now blazing in the temples of antigod.
All of us are moderns in a certain sense; we do not love Love as we ought.
God is a consuming fire, and we are puny embers. Christ came to cast fire upon the earth, and we throw up a smokescreen. We are all waiting for Elijah to take Him down! Why do we not do it and do it now! We go up to Calvary, but we come down uncrucified! Woe! Woe unto us that come down from Golgotha’s hills with hands unscarred and white. From the Cross, the Savior cries, “I thirst,” and we reach Him vinegar and gall. If the Cross means anything, it means that our human goodness is not enough.
Prodigal Catholic 
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