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PATROLOGOS edutainment

Cain immediately feels and experiences the sufferings of the punishment and of the sentence, that God imposes upon him. And immediately he opens his mouth, in order to speak with shamelessness towards God and to complaint for the unbearable type of punishment. 

That wretched doesn't see his terrible crime in order to humble himself. He sees the punishment in order to complaint against God, that supposedly He unduly punished him. 

And instead of recognizing the judgement as fair and as the decision of God and to accept it remaining humble, in order to find some day mercy and forgiveness, now, instead, he messes with God complaining against Him, that He judges and condemns too strictly and that He imposes punishments, that are impossible to be beared by the punished criminal. 

He doesn't thank God, cause He didn't deliver him yet to the suffering of hell. He complaints. This means hardening and darkening and blindness caused by the sin. And this is what it's called impenitence. 

But behold, how in the beginning God treats Cain and how he remains unrepentant and ever gets worse. 

God advices him as a father in the beginning and he disobeys. He punishes him as a fair Judge He is but also as benevolent and wise Pedagogue and he remains incorrigible. 

He is an unrepentant heart and tough. And the tough and unrepentant hearts, like Cain, instead of benefiting by the saving discipline of the Lord, they instead get damaged and they get hardened even more. Because they think, that God wrongs them and He mistreats them, when He disciplines them. 

And what does Cain say to God? Behold his own words: «My crime is too great to be forgiven. Surely You have driven me out this day from the face of the earth, and I shall be hidden from Your face, and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth; and it will happen that anyone who meets me will kill me». 

The cause for which I am accused and the sentence, which You impose on me for this cause, is bigger than being permitted in this life and being able to live. It can't be endured, it can't be beared this punishment. How will I be able to live with this punishment? 

Cain does not confess now, that his crime is very grave. No; he mainly talks for his punishment. 

And this punishment he considers unbearable and grave, much more severe than just be allowed in this life, to be able in other words to live. And he recounts now the reasons, for which he considers so grave the punishment. 

If, he says, You drive me out today from the face of the earth, if you curse me not to have asylum nowhere on the earth, then where shall I find refuge? 

To find refuge in You, it is impossible, because I shall tremble Your justice and I shall fear your wrath and I will hide myself in order not to ever see Your face. 

Heaven therefore is closed for me. It remains to me only the earth with her goods. But now, You take away from me her too and You condemn me to exist and to live with sighs and with fear and with tremor on the earth. 

How am I going to live? And who will protect me? Who will safeguard my life? The first who will encounter me, will kill me. 

That is what Cain says. And if he would say these things someone else to God, the thing would be bearable. But to be him telling those things? What then should Abel say against him and how many complaints it would be appropriate for him to say to God against the fratricide Cain that innocent victim? 

Cain deprived him from the goods of the present life, without this innocent can be blamed for anything and without Cain having no right for it and no authority. 

He deprived him of the earth and of its goods, without him being guilty of anything. And now that the ruler of everything and the Fair Judge deprives Cain from the same goods, from which he deprived his brother, he dares to open his mouth to complain? 

Now that God, having both the right and the authority for doing it, deprives these goods from him, who is not innocent like Abel, but instead is a criminal and atrocious fratricide, with what audacious togue he comes to ask for justice and protection? 

He, a while before, had taken the life of his brother Abel. And now he asks for protection for his own life. 

For the life of his brother he was shown to be rough and wild and like an untamed beast he stained his nefarious hands with the fraternal blood. For his own life he trembles and he fears lest somebody would cut it off him. And he doesn't feel at least even now, what kind of evil he committed to his brother Abel, in order to take away from him so fiercely the life. 

Ah! the sin, my brother. How much it obscures us and how much it blinds us! Sin, for herself, that is, for the sinner who commits it whom sin conducts and governs, for him sin appears selfish and full of fear, when it is about for him to lose something or be exposed to some danger. 

But what if it's about the others? Oh, then all the insensitivity and the lack of empathy they present themselves together, in order to transform the sinner to a beast willing to scrounge from the neighbour all these goods, about which a while ago he himself was fearing lest they would be scrounged from him by someone else. 

A miserable man Cain is. Alienated from God, estranged also from the people; alienated even also from the creation of God. 

He nowhere has a shelter; not any friend; not any ally and assistant. And yet he remains unrepentant. The unhappiness he can feel it well and he describes it well. He is not disposed however to depart from the cause, that brought to him that unhappiness, that is from the sin. 

You see here, my reader, as in a picture, what will be happening with the sinners in the future life to come; they will suffer like Cain; they will be unhappy like Cain; they will be conscious of their unhappiness, just like Cain. 

And yet they will remain unrepentant in their sin, just like Cain remained, and they will not be able to approach towards God, just like he cannot approach Cain either. 

Of course, he understands very well Cain his unhappiness. Certainly not as much as he understands it someone else, who remains near God, and shudders lest it should happen some day to end up to the point Cain arrived. 

He feels however that he is unhappy and he feels the weight of the suffering that presses him. 

First of all he feels, that he is separated from God; that he does not enjoy His love; that he cannot count on His protection; that he is continually persecuted by the wrath of God and he is accompanied by His curse. 

He cogitates therefore about God and he immediately trembles. He listens to the name of God and immediately he feels fear. What? Is this a game? God has been enraged. Not some human. 

They tell you in some occasion, that some man of influence and power has disfavoured you and immediately you get upset. A man and not God. 

Reflect, the amount of trembling that will fall upon your soul, if you become certain, that the Almighty God is enraged with you. Cain trembles. Don't you see, what he says? «From Your face I shall be hidden». 

I will hide, as they hide the weak women and children, when enemies invade in their country. I will hide, as they hide the unarmed virgins when ferocious thieves from the mountains come with fury to violate them. 

Cain also feels, that he missed the comforts of life and the goods of life. And he becomes therefore a wanderer, who cannot find nowhere rest and peace. 

As if he is being beaten by all the winds and by all the rains and as if he is flowing on the waves of a vast ocean being a small and weak little straw, that will not be able to stand anywhere and find peace. «A fugitive and a vagabond will be on the earth». 

And despite all these his own life he wants it. Even if it's full of worries and of fears. Even if it's never free of bitterness and sighs. 

This is what it means curse of God and punishment of God. To fall upon a man and to torment him harshly, without being able in any way the man to remove it from his life. 

Cain wants his life. And together with the so many other fears, that he feels, it is being added another fear no less agonizing; the fear lest they deprive him from the life, lest they kill him. 

It seems to him that whoever meets him, will try to murder him. He imagines that with whoever he might encounter, he will be in danger of of his life. And he clearly says it to God: «And it will happen that anyone who meets me will kill me». 

But God does not want to be killed and to die Cain so soon. If He wanted it He would have done it Himself. God wants Cain to live. 

To live in order to be disciplined and be punished accordingly to his criminal act. To live and become a reference to the other children of Adam, a terrible reference, which will also teach, how terrible act is the murder and how much relentlessly God punishes. 

«And He said to Cain God the Lord; It won't be like that; but whoever kills Cain vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold; and then the Lord set a mark on Cain, lest should kill him anyone finding him». 

It won't happen thus, as you imagine. It won't happen that, that you fear. «It won't be like that». Because I am the Lord and I determine that the man who will dare to kill Cain, will be harshly punished by Me. 

If Cain is punished once for the murder of the innocent Abel, that man who will kill Cain will be punished seven times. Because that man will oppose My will, which is for Cain to be punished in this present life as well, and this man will try to cancel the curse and the wrath, that I gave him. 

And the Holy Scripture adds, that God the Lord set a mark, He marked Cain, in order to be distinguished from the other people and in order to be apparent that he killed his brother Abel and that by no means absolutely anybody should set an end to his tortured and miserable life. 

And thus, therefore, my reader, you are convinced, that sometimes the longevity might as well not be a blessing by God. As similarly the premature death might also be a favor from God. 

Abel, the benevolent and harmless, whom God loved, dies young. Cain, the criminal and unscrupulous, whom God cursed, lives many years. It is a blessing for Abel the premature death; it is a curse for Cain the many years in life. 

God threatens a terrible punishment to whom would dare to kill Cain. Once he were, that criminal, into the hands of God, why would he want to meddle in the middle some other human too? 

«Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord». 

I hold in My hands the knife of the revenge and I can punish the transgressor and certainly I will repay him, the consequences of his evilness. 

How do you dare, you the sick and weak human to snatch from My hands this knife and to usurp my own privilege? 

Thus therefore even the worst criminal we have no right arbitrarily and voluntarily to revenge him and to use force against him. 

To the person, who spilled the blood of our brother, who killed a beloved to us person, it is not allowed, it is forbidden for us to punish him and to revenge on our own and with our own hands of our unjustly killed beloved one the brutally spilled blood. 

Someone else is in charge as Lord and Master as much of the murdered as of the one who killed him. 

In the hands of Him let the murderer be. Him alone has the right to take revenge. And He will certainly take revenge, because He is interested more than you for the delivery of justice and for the unjustly spilled blood of the murdered. 

Even if he is the worst monster the one who did the crime. Even if it is the darkest act the act that he did. Even if Cain is murderer of his brother. You are not allowed to raise your hand against him. You are committing a great sin, if you seek to take revenge from him. 

But let us see now, my reader, what happened to Cain after the curse of God and after the marking that God did to him, in order to prevent his assassination by those, that would meet him. 

The Holy Scripture in a few words tells us that: «Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden». Cain went out from the presence of the Lord. He separated from God and he distanced himself completely and definitely from Him. 

He stopped already to offer sacrifices to God and to attend to the sacrifices, that were offered by his father, Adam. And he didn't participate at all to the familiar worship, through which the house of Adam must have worshiped God the Creator. 

And he departs even from the place, where his parents live together with his other brothers. He goes away and he goes to create his own house and his own village. 

«And dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden». He moves to another land and to another place, that is situated at some distance from the place, where his father Adam lives. 

And thus he separates himself and his cursed seed from the sacred seed, away from the fearing and God worshiping people. And so they were directly separated the darnel from the wheat, the wild goats from the meek lambs. 

Cain left. He could not live there and for this he leaves. What do you think? Is it an easy thing for the disturbed man to live together with the man of God? 

No matter how much he humbles himself in front of him this lamb of God, the perverted man is impossible to find peace and rest and pleasure and in the company of the benevolent and virtuous cohabitation and collaboration. 

The first is guided by the spiritual world while the other is guided by the carnal world. «But these two are opposed to each other». That is, the flesh and the spirit are fighting and are in war to each other. 

Cain departed. And he will live, since God said it. And he will be able even also his own village to build; he will see furthermore also descendants, who will inhabit in the city, which Cain is going to build. 

What can you do however? The region in which Cain dwells in hebrew was called land of Naid or Nod, which means trembling land and shaking, if we translate the word Naid or Nod in the Greek language. 

Rest therefore he cannot find anywhere the wretched Cain and his miserable life is fermented with the poison and with the bitterness. 

This, my reader, is the story of the fratricide Cain. 

A story full of blood and of horror, a tragic story and gloomy and fierce, and also a story that is educational, which must put into thoughts each one of us and to awake the attention of each one of us. 

Because we see in it, my brother, where the man can end up, when God abandons him. We can see, how easily a disposition of enmity and hatred and envy can be converted to a murderous disposition and bring forth a murder. 

And of course the idea of killing your brother has never come to your mind. But the fury and the resentment and the antipathy and the envy are feelings that very easily can enter in the heart of the man. 

Be careful, my Christian. Pay attention to your heart. Be careful, so that they never enter in it these seeds the bloodstained and bloodthirsty, but even if some time they show up, you should drive them out and shut them down immediately. 

When you listen to the name of Cain, you shudder and you loathe and you do not want any to this criminal to have affinity and relationship. 

But be careful when you allow the criminal of the hate and of the envy feelings to enter in your soul, you are doing nothing else other than being alike to Cain and being a relative to him. 

Do you want this? No! Well, then clean up diligently your heart. 

End of chapter 5