Eve, weeping over the body of her beloved son, slain by the hand of his brother, is a type of the sorrowful Mother of God who stood, sorrowing, at the foot of the Cross on which hung her divine Son, slain by His brethren, the Jews.
Application. Envy is very easily aroused in our hearts. Have you never felt envious when others have been praised or rewarded? Detest envy, and overcome all temptations to it, for it is a hateful sin, and the source of many other sins. “Through the envy of the devil death came into the world, and they follow him who are of his side” (Wisd. 2, 24). If you let envy get possession of you, you are imitating the devil, and are his child. Do you wish, to be a child of the devil ? If not, be not envious and jealous of others, but rather rejoice when good befalls them. Drive away envy, for from envy came the first murder.
The divine admonition to overcome the desire to sin applies to everybody. If God required of Cain that he should master his evil desires, how much more does He require it of us Christians, to whom so many graces have been given? Examine yourself and see what sin you are most inclined to, whether it be lying, or greediness, or laziness, or disobedience, or anger, or sinful curiosity, and resolve never to give way to it, but to overcome it at once. Resist the beginnings of sin. If Cain had stifled his envy in the beginning, he would not have become a fratricide! God warns you through your conscience, in the same way that He warned Cain. Do not resist these warnings, or you will grow up hard hearted.
If you have sinned through thoughtlessness or weakness, go at once and confess your sin to the priest, who is the representative of God, and God will forgive you. He who does not make a good confession, is hard hearted, like Cain.
Chapter VI.
THE DELUGE.
(About 2400 B. C.)
[Gen. 5—7 ]
ADAM lived nine hundred and thirty years. He had many sons and daughters to whom he announced the law of God and the coming of the Redeemer[1]. His immediate descendants also lived to a very great age. Mathusala, the oldest of them,
- ↑ Redeemer . According to the promise that the seed of the woman would overcome sin and the devil.
