The Household of God
Volume 1
The early history of mankind
- Chapter 15 -
CAIN'S CONFESSION
And behold, after Cain had done this, his pious brother Abel followed him and spoke to him in the name of eternal Love:
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"O brother, why do you eat the flesh of the serpent when there is plenty of fruit available to satisfy your hunger? Our father Adam drank of the juice of a plant he did not know and which the serpent had prepared with cunning and mastery in its boundless malice to destroy him and his descendants. Because of that he sinned before the Lord of all justice, and all of you through him. And I myself was burdened with the weight of the guilt before God and had to do penance like you who all drank of the juice of perdition, and like you I had to leave Paradise and take your burden upon myself bodily and all your blessings spiritually and thus had a twofold burden because of all.
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"And you eat the flesh of the live serpent together with its blood. Why did you do that, Cain?"
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And behold, Cain recovered from his anger and rage, looked at Abel and said: "Behold, I did it out of revenge to destroy the serpent and its kind and to destroy myself since I was never found worthy of the Lord's blessing and because I became the way I am not through my fault, but through the fault of the parents. They were before me, and I came into existence when they sinned before the eyes of Jehovah.
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"Why must I repent my guilt when I could never have contributed to it since I am only the fruit of sin and not its cause; and why did I have to be deprived of the blessing which all of you received in abundance and had to drag myself along burdened by the undeserved curse of Jehovah, whilst you leapt like harts?
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"And now behold the reason for my action. The serpent in the grass spoke to me and said: 'Consume me, eat your fill of my flesh and quench your thirst with my blood, and you shall become a lord of the earth. All your descendants will rule upon it and their power and might will surpass that of all the blessed ones. I do not give you any commandment, only the might to rule and the power to subject everything to your will! '
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"And lo, the serpent continued: 'My flesh will destroy you in your unjust guilt before God and my blood will give you a new reality without guilt, endowed with all might and power.' -Then the serpent was silent and I seized it, tore it to pieces and consumed it as you have just seen.
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And behold, here Abel was prompted to action. With his right hand he wielded the sword of justice above the head of Cain and Cain's eyes became opened and he saw his great guilt in accusing God and his parents. He recognized the whole guilt within himself and saw the inscrutable ways of eternal Love in Its mysterious and boundless wisdom and understood that he himself was actually the seductive serpent which, thanks to eternal Love's boundless mercy, bad become man through him. In this way it could - and should have -, though by greater trials, become aware of its present unblessed state of infirmity and in this awareness in the full independence and freedom of its being turned to the Lord of all the might and power. Then it would have, like the already blessed, received the fullest, most powerful blessing and thereby re-admittance to the great grace of all- merciful Love.
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And he realized that this serpent which he had just consumed was he himself in his still evil part, and that only through his anger had he breathed the same upon the earth in its former nature, and that the words of the serpent were his own words from the innermost depth of his original being prior to all creation of the visible world of matter.
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He also understood how he thereby once more absorbed the serpent into his own being or how he had again fortified himself in an evil and the there from resulting errors and saw how deeply he had now fallen into death.
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Then, seized with great remorse, he threw himself to the ground and wept and cried aloud: "O great, exceedingly mighty, powerful and holy God! Only now do I recognize my endless guilt and weakness before You, Your justice, but also Your infinite love!
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"Behold, I am unworthy of this existence. Therefore, do annihilate me completely for ever so that I may no longer exist and my greatest and personal guilt may thereby be wiped out for all future blessed descendants of Adam and Eve!"
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And behold, his brother took the sword into his left hand and wielded it again - but this time over Cain's breast.
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Now new life flowed into Cain and his hunger for death left him; instead, his hunger for life became all the greater. But he could not find anything to satisfy it promptly, and so he turned once more to Abel and said:
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"Look, brother, I greatly hunger for a food of life that contains life and not death, like the flesh of the serpent and its cold blood. For behold, brother, since I have now from the depth of my being recognized what I was like before and what I am like now, I feel great remorse and a great hunger and burning thirst for the divine love and its great mercy. For I weep without a voice and my repentance is without tears. Therefore, give me the voice of love and quench my great thirst with the tears of repentance.
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"For hear and conceive it: I, the greatest, became less than dust; I, the strongest, became weaker than a gnat; and I, the most brilliant, became darker than the center of the earth.
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"And that is how I am now before you who came as a small spirit out of me and is now already greater in everything than I was when the world did not exist as yet. I got myself imprisoned in my all too great strength and became the weakest of all. For those who had much, lost much and those who had little, lost little; and I who had everything, lost it all and all through my fault, and the others lost their much and their little through my burning guilt, too.
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"O brother Abel, do not hesitate and serve me a food of life in order that I may obtain a voice for weeping and give me, the unblessed, a drink in order that I may not die in my repentance without tears."
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Then Abel stepped once more upon the ground of the earth and bodily walking up to Cain, said: "Cain, you weak brother of my body and son of Adam and Eve, rise and follow me. I will lead you back to the parents and all the brothers and sisters and there you will find in abundance what you were lacking; and you shall satisfy your hunger and quench your thirst.
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"But once you have satisfied your hunger and quenched your burning thirst, remember the Lord in His love and merciful grace and remember that the first is the last and the last is the first.
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"And now follow me in patience and meekness and let all your strength henceforth be patience and all your power, meekness. Thus also you will still find grace before Him whose love is infinite and has no bounds in all eternity."