The sixth irreligious group are the sensationalists: those for whom religion must always be dramatic, i.e., they judge it by their feelings rather than by their minds and wills; their religion is a titillation rather than a sanctification; a “feeling good” rather than being good; a startling overtone rather than a quiet, subdued minor.
They accuse the Church of doing nothing because it is not doing anything sensational.
There is nothing so calculated to win many modern minds to religion as playing the fool, catering to the gallery, and making salvation dramatic.
The sensationalists were represented at the Cross by the Roman soldiers
of whom Luke writes: “And the soldiers also mocked him, coming to him, and offering him vinegar and saying: If thou be the King of the Jews save thyself ” (Luke 23:36–37).
These men were not Jews, nor citizens of conquered Israel; they were proud legionnaires of Rome’s screaming eagles.
But there was something more significant still in their mockery; these men were sensationalists: hence they expected religion to be dramatic — just as dramatic as unloosening fetters and turning a cross into a throne. In their eyes, God could justify Himself only by doing a stunt, by being eccentric, pandering to their love of excitement.
They wanted a Life of Christ as Hollywood might do it, with love scenes between Judas and Magdalen.
That is why they asked Him to step down from the Cross. They wanted an incident that would make them say “Ah” when their eyes saw it, rather than the one that would make them say “I believe” when their minds, under the grace of God, knew it.
Satan, too, believes in the dramatic.
One of the temptations on the mount was to suggest to Christ that He throw Himself down from the pinnacle unhurt, summoning to Himself legions of angels bearing Him up, lest He dash His foot against a stone.
And now the sensationalists at the Cross, with their jaded appetites and their sadistic impulses, make the same appeal.
Come down from the Cross with rosebuds in place of scars, garlands in place of a crown of thorns, and with power instead of sacrifice.
Just suppose He did come down unscarred from that Cross.
Would these sensationalists have believed?
They probably would have summoned a professor from Athens to prove it was all an illusion.
While these soldiers were asking for something as dramatic as the King of the Jews unloosening His manacles of steel, Our Blessed Lord said in His language a very simple word, a word that meant: “The drama is already over.” And the word He spoke was a word of quiet triumph:
“It is finished” (John 19:30).
To those soldiers, it must have been as preposterous as if you came into a theater about 8:30 one evening and, while you asked: “When is the curtain going up?” someone on the stage announced: “I am very sorry, the play is over. The curtain is already rung down. You have missed the plot. It is finished.” Sensationalists miss divinity for just that reason: the true religion is always unspectacular.
Three common criminals in the eyes of Roman law carry their crosses up a hill. One of them Our Savior forgives and rescues him into paradise. It was so undramatic. In fact, it was boring. So the soldiers took dice and sat down and shook them to see who would have His garments. There, within a stone’s throw of them — was being enacted the tremendous drama of redemption, and they only sat and gambled.
All life is a gamble, as we only know it! Some throw dice and play for such small stakes, such as garments and wealth; others throw a life and play for the stake of eternal salvation. But it was so undramatic! They missed their play and lost! But the man on the Cross was saying His cause had won. “It is finished.”
What did He mean: “It is finished”?
Three times this phrase is used in Sacred Scripture: at the beginning of human history, at the end, and in the middle. At the beginning, for in Genesis, we read: “So the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the furniture of them” (Gen. 2:1).
At the end of time, we hear that Word sounding throughout the world: “And there came a great voice out of the temple from the throne saying: It is done” (Rev. 16:17).
Between these two extremes, we hear Our Lord on the Cross dividing all history into a period before and after His coming, binding both unto Himself in this sixth utterance from the Cross: “It is finished.”
This word was not the sigh of a sufferer finding relief; it was the word of a Divine Artist finishing the work His Father had given Him to do — finished at about the age of thirty-three. Thus, the perfecting of creation by redemption and the restoration to fallen man of the dignity of divine adoption was rendered all the more undramatic because He did not finish His work with an autobiography. Rather, His autobiography was a biography. He did not say: “I finished it”; but “It is finished.”
Sensationalists! Salvation is not sensational. Faith is not emotional; the redemption is not dramatic.
You can sit in the very shadow of the Cross as did the soldiers, and still miss its meaning. You can justify your refusal to come to God because of scandals. So did the soldiers. It was an awful scandal that Christ the Son of God should swing impotent from a peg. From that quiet, undramatic word that His work was perfected, learn that no one is as unsensational as God. He comes in the zephyrs, not in thunder.
Therefore, look for God in the commonplace. “That they should seek God, if happily they may feel after him or find him, although he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and are” (Acts 17:27–28).
Do you ever remember an evening when the deadening sounds of the world faded away, and you found yourself gazing down a new avenue of spiritual yearning? That was the voice of God. That was an actual grace.
Did you ever feel a remorse, a sense of emptiness, a disgust with excesses, or wish for inner peace? That was the voice of God.
Make this experiment whether you believe in God or not. At your first opportunity, stop in a Catholic Church for a visit. You need not believe, as we Catholics do, that Our Lord is really and truly present in the tabernacle. But just sit there for an hour, and within that hour you will experience a surpassing peace the like of which you never before enjoyed in your life. You will ask yourself as a sensationalist once asked me when we made an all-night vigil of adoration in the Basilica of Sacre Coeur in Paris: “What is it that is in that church?” Without voice or argument or thundering demands, you will have an awareness of something before which your spirit trembles — a sense of the Divine. God walks into your soul with silent step. God comes to you more than you go to Him. Every time a channel is made for Him, He pours into it His fresh gift of grace. And it is all done so undramatically — in prayer, in the sacraments, before the altar, in loving service of our fellow man.
Never will His coming be what you expect, and yet never will it disappoint. The more you respond to His gentle pressure, the greater will be your freedom. Too long have you wanted to be “just yourself.” Can’t you think of anything better than that? How about living as a child of God?
Prodigal Catholic 
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