I Am Cain

Yesterday's Gospel was about the first act of murder. Cain killed his brother Abel. Although God knows everything, and Cain had to know He knew everything, when asked where Abel was, Cain uttered the second evasion.  (His mother and father had already uttered the first.after their act of disobedience at the devil's behest which thrust mankind into the knowledge of the evil and the capacity for evil. ).In saying, "Am I my brother's keeper?" he effectively and contemptuously denied to God what God already knew, and perhaps even hoped that somehow it was possible to fool his very Creator! In the world of human beings that followed, it has been possible for people to utter such lies and be believed by other people, and escape responsibility, or worse fool themselves that really, there was good reason. His Father in Heaven didn't love him as much as He loved Abel. And so, Abel should die that first death.

I have heard many sermons, homilies, talks on Cain, as no doubt any religious person has. But yesterday's homily somehow caught me with one phrase--that Cain had allowed his negative thoughts to overtake him to such a dramatic end. You could argue that it was a psychological rather than a theological homily. But on the other hand, that is what evil is, a flood of negativity spurred by a force, that we call the devil, that so overwhelms reason and the love of the good of others, that we act with cataclysmic impulsiveness.

Imagine it. A field where Abel is toiling. He is happy. His crops are bearing fruit. It is quiet in the field, with the sun shining, a pale reminder of the paradise out of which the family was thrown because Adam and Eve wanted to take Divinity from God. He would have given them anything, but they wanted it all, on their own terms. Abel, despite the consequence of the Fall, has managed still to trust and love God. But his brother, Cain, is an angry man, maybe because of what happened to his parents, and thus, to him. And there is that little brother, doesn't he know what happened? Why is he so happy? Why are his crops growing and Cain's are not? Why does Cain's God not favor him?

"The smug little bastard!" we can imagine Cain thinking to himself as he sees his brother tilling in the breeze. By the time he has reached his brother, who doesn't understand what it is he could have done to cause such ire, he is rage filled. Cain cannot see through the jealousy and hate. And he strikes his brother with the force of his fury.

God somehow promised to make good out of the evil his creatures had unleashed in an exercise of the free will that was intended as a gift. What would the gift of life have been without free will? He did not want automatons. He gave us the freedom to choose Him freely. And then our universal parents did not choose Him. They did what Lucifer did. "I will not submit."

So through generations there have been scourges, wars, religious misinterpretations, and one act after another that mirrors the first rage filled murder. Come on, haven't you felt it, that rage that someone approves of another more than you? That life is not fair? That some people suffer more than others, and from your point of view, your suffering is the worst? We see in what passes for news the violent blows of a husband against a wife, a father against a son, a mother against a daughter. And always, the lie about what happened, and the self-justification for an unjustified and heinous act.

We tell ourselves, no we are enlightened. And if we just got rid of religion, there wouldn't be all these beheadings and crucifixions by zealots.

God kept faith, and tomorrow, some of his creatures begin a season that remembers how He kept faith with us in the fullness of time. We each of us have essentially the choice of Paradise. Only this time, it's about the way back in, through the very suffering that we unleashed upon ourselves by disobedience.  And this time, if we decide against God, that He is not our Master, or even more, He doesn't even exist to make demands upon us, then it is an individual decision. But the sin of Adam and Eve, and of Cain, still dogs us, because the greatest deceiver can twist our weak minds and our weaker souls. If I forget about the evil of which I am capable, I will let my guard down. If I insist that I don't need something beyond myself, if I pretend that I am not Cain should the devil tempt me, then I will lose Paradise again.

I originally titled this entry, "I Am Cain, You Are Cain, We All Are Cain" but suddenly I thought I shouldn't speak for those people who would say, "I don't believe in this stuff".

But what if it is true? What if, by recognizing that God has the Grace in Abundance to keep us from being separated from Him for eternity--for that is the fire of hell, the fire of the absence of any hope of Love--we get back into Paradise.

Pretending that we are different from Cain doesn't make us different. It is the individual human heart that must change now. I need to pray that my heart changes, once for all.

As Father Robert Barron posits in his book, "The Strangest Way" which as you probably know from other entries, I love, the Cross is the center of Christian faith because God loved us so much, wanted us back with Him in Paradise, so much, that He became us and showed us the way through the suffering we had unleashed by our smirking covetousness and self-help that through us into torment.

When I am in doubt, I find Pascal's wager a nice safety net. If it were to turn out that there is o God, then it won't matter to me in oblivion, but if it does turn out that there is a God and that my effort to believe was correct, whew. (Well, that's my version of the wager.) But when I read, and consider and pray, however badly I do that, God's Presence does burst through in undeniable moments.

Maybe, with God's grace, in the moment of crisis, I won't be Cain. I will be a saint, which after all, is just really a good friend of God.