Neither Cold nor Hot
November 10, 2026
Hello! How is each and every one? What are we looking forward to? We are now in the 32nd week in Ordinary Time. Another week and then the last week followed by the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King. Thursday before this last Sunday of November is Thanksgiving Day. We can always look forward to thanksgiving. It should not really make a big difference as every day we thank God for life and everything big and little, realized or not, noticeable or not. The best attitude is gratitude. The more you give thanks the more you are given many other things. Blessings keep going your way.
Following is the continuation of the fifth word of Christ from the Cross (From The Cries of Jesus from the Cross, A Fulton J. Sheen’s Anthology).
6 A Word to the Moderns
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.”
The moderns are good persons by the standards of the world; they have their daughter married in a church, where she was never baptized; they like Easter Sunday services and particularly the fashion parade that follows; in discussions, they feel that a pretty good case can be made out for the existence of some power behind the universe.
They read seven books a year — all novels, chosen because they were either widely advertised or because their neighbor read them; they serve on hospital boards and in parent-teachers associations, and contribute to birth-control clinics and Russian relief, but always within the limit allowed by income tax.
They send their children to the best schools they can afford; never send them to church, but let them go to the movies at least twice a week. They take their politics from a radio commentator; their economics from their son who has had one year of it under a Marxist professor in college. They think there are too many divorces but after all, we are not living in the Middle Ages. They believe that the majority is always right; that religion does add some sentiment and symbolism to life — in a word, they are what their neighbors would call “good” people.
Their words are correct; their manners courteous; they shrink from giving pain to others; they discountenance profligacy; cursing and swearing are vulgar: they are the good moderns.
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.
Transactions of business speculations in
stocks, the ephemeral happenings of the day, the superficial wisdom of
commentators — all these find a way directly to their hearts. But religion to
them is weariness when it is not humorous. Religion, they say, makes them
melancholy, and they want to relax.
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 humor 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.
It is not what they know that is true, which keeps them from salvation; it is what they know that is wrong! They realize this when they come into the Church. Church windows from the outside look like meaningless lead tracings, but from the inside, looking out, they reveal patterns of exquisite beauty and loveliness.
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. Who has not heard of “that panting thirst which scorches in the breath of those that die the soldier’s fiery death”? (Lord Byron, Lara, canto 2, stanza 16).
For almost three hours now, He had remained bareheaded, except for a crown of thorns, under that burning, blinding sun, while from four fountains there poured out life in the form of blood. It was therefore natural for Him to ask for a drink!
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. Religion is love and:
Love is not love
Which alters, when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O! No! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken; . . .
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks
But bears it out even to the edge of doom. (William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116, lines 2–11).
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 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!
Hate and love spring from the same passion, as laughter and sorrow drink from the same fountain of tears. The difference is in the motive and the end for which they live. Religion is something that must be either hated or loved. It cannot be watched!
Too many people get credit for being good when they are only passive. They are too often praised for being broadminded when they are so broadminded they can never make up their minds about anything. They are like the icebergs in the cold streams of the North; they cannot help being icebergs! But let those icebergs get down into the warm gulfstream of the south and yet remain icebergs: then they will have character!
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.
What is particularly interesting is that those religious shops who compromised on God’s truth to win you moderns, are the very ones whom you moderns today reject.
Moderns! The proofs for the divinity of
Christ are never so overwhelming as to destroy your freedom; they are
sufficient to convince you, but not to compel you. Christ will never batter
down the door of your reason: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock” (see Rev.
3:20). The latch is on our side of the door, not on God’s side.
The proper aim of speculation is not merely to destroy falsehood but to preserve and consolidate the structure of truth. There is a grave danger in too much analysis:
Little by little we subtract
Faith and fallacy from fact,
The illusory from the true,
And starve upon the residue. (Samuel Hoffenstein, “Rag-Bag.”)
You may have greater knowledge of uncorrelated facts than most people — moderns often do — but you have done nothing with your wills. Did you ever stop to think that there is such a thing as knowledge increasing through love?
You must, of course, first know to love, but then you must love to know, for the knowledge from the outside that comes from investigation is nothing compared with the knowledge that comes from the inside by love.
When you know a thing, you draw it to yourself; when you love a thing, you draw yourself to it. Have you ever tried to love God even on the basis of the little knowledge that you did have? If you had, your knowledge would have grown by leaps and bounds. “If any man will do the will of him; he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself ” (John 7:17).
You moderns will never be convinced of religion by argument, for the chances are you have sufficient knowledge. You need good will. The best cure for “skeptic poisoning” is love. Develop fire and enthusiasm — God has no use for tepid souls.
Love your neighbor with an unselfish, dedicated, passionate love, and you will find God. Visit the sick in the hospitals, the poor in the slums. Give them some of your possessions, but also listen to them.
Notice the different attitudes of those who have faith and those who lack it; how peaceful some are in suffering, and how rebellious others are. Slowly you will come to see that if God can make so much difference in their lives, what a difference He would make in your own.
Suffer deeply in sympathy with others; love them in an unselfish way, and you will learn more than you ever learned from books. Elijah will never come to you, but Christ will come in suffering and in need.
“For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in: naked, and you covered me: sick, and you visited me; I was in prison, and you came to me” (Matt. 25:35–36).
Our Lord said: “I thirst.” This was the crucified way of saying “Come to me, all you that labor, 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.
“Give me to drink,” He said to the woman at the well. But He who asked also said: “If thou didst know the gift of God, and who he is that saith to thee, give me to drink, thou perhaps wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water” (John 4:10). He thirsts for us, only because we need Him so! It is not His loss if we love Him not; it is ours.
Without Him our hearts are panting, our lips are parched. Tomorrow we think the rocks of the world will give us fountains, but the next day we find them dry. Each new day brings on its new deception and vain glimmer of the same mirage.
Finally, 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 anti-god.
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. Well may He say to us:
You call me Master, and obey me not.
You call me Light, and see me not.
You call me Way, and walk not.
You call me Life, and desire me not,
You call me wise, and follow me not,
You call me fair, and love me not,
You call me rich, and ask me not,
You call me eternal, and seek me not,
You call me gracious, and trust me not,
You call me noble, and serve me not.
You call me mighty, and honor me not,
You call me just, and feed me not.
If I condemn thee, blame me not. (Engraved on an old slab in the Cathedral of Lubeck, Germany).
— Seven Words to the Cross
Now how can we avoid living in this modern time but without being modern doing as the moderns do? First, let us as always bring the topic above to our conversation with Jesus in the quiet moments of our prayer this week. Talk to Him about everything in our desires, thoughts, words and deeds, our observations around us and then listen to what He will surely tell you and do as He tells you. Second, do the Tai Chi 24/7 above and go against all the characteristics of the moderns. Let us compare notes next week. Good luck!
See you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may
you find love and laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care;
‘til He brings us together again.”
Affectionately,
Guadalupinky
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