Lesson –
Genesis iv. 17‒26;
v. 1‒5
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and brought forth Henoch: and he built a city and called the name thereof by the name of his son Henoch. And Henoch begot Irad, and Irad begot Maviael, and Maviael begot Mathusael, and Mathusael begot Lamech: Who took two wives: the name of the one was Ada, and the name of the other Sella. And Ada brought forth Jabel: who was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of herdsmen. And his brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of them that play on the harp and the organs. Sella also brought forth Tubalcain, who was a hammerer and artificer in every work of brass and iron. And the sister of Tubalcain was Noema. And Lamech said to his wives Ada and Sella: “Hear my voice, you wives of Lamech, listen to my speech: for I have slain a man to the wounding of myself, and a stripling to my own bruising. Sevenfold vengeance will be taken for Cain: but for Lamech seventy times sevenfold. Adam also knew his wife again: and she brought forth a son, and called his name Seth, saying: “God has given me another seed, for Abel whom Cain slew.” But to Seth also was born a son, whom he called Enos; this man began to call on the name of the Lord.
This is the book of the generation of Adam. In the day that God created man, He made him to the likeness of God. He created them male and female; and blessed them: and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. And Adam lived a hundred and thirty years, and begot a son to his own image and likeness, and called his name Seth. And the days of Adam, after he begot Seth, were eight hundred years: and he begot sons and daughters. And all the time that Adam lived came to nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.
Thanks be to God.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
The curse which is henceforth to lie so heavily on every human being has been expressed in the sentence pronounced against Eve. The curse to which the Earth itself is to be subjected is Adam’s sentence. “Because you have hearkened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat, cursed is the Earth in your work” (that is, on account of what you have done) (Genesis iii. 17). Adam had excused his sin. God does not admit his excuse, yet He mercifully makes allowance for him, seeing that he sinned not so much to gratify himself, as to please the frail creature that had been formed out of his own substance. He is not the originator of the disobedient act. God, therefore, sentences him to the personal humiliation of labour and toil, and of eating his bread in the sweat of his brow (Genesis iii. 17, 19). Outside the Garden of Eden there lies the immense desert of the Earth. It is to be the valley of tears, and there must Adam dwell in exile for upwards of nine hundred years, with the sad recollection in his heart of the few happy days spent in Paradise! This desert is barren: Adam must give it fruitfulness by his toil, and draw from it, by the sweat of his brow, his own and his children’s nourishment.
If, in after ages, some men will live without toil, they are the exception confirming the general law and chastisement. They rest, because others have laboured long and hard for them. Neither will God ratify their exceptional dispensation from labour, except on the condition that they give encouragement, by their charity and other virtues, to their fellow-men in whom Adam’s sentence is literally carried out. Such is the necessity of toil that if it be refused, the Earth will yield but thorns and thistles. Such, too, the importance of this law imposed on fallen Man, that idleness will not only corrupt his heart, it will also enervate his bodily strength.
Before his sin the trees of Paradise bent down their branches and man fed on their delicious fruits, but now he must till the earth and draw from it, with anxiety and fatigue, the seed which is to give him bread. Nothing could better express the penal relation between him and the earth, from which he was originally formed, and which is henceforth to be his tomb, than this law to which God sentences him — of being indebted to the earth for the nourishment which is to keep him in life. And yet, here also Divine Mercy will show itself for, when God will have been appeased, it will be granted to man to unite himself to his Creator by eating the Bread of Life, which is to come down from Heaven, and whose efficacy for the nourishing of our souls, will be greater than ever the fruit of the Tree of Life could have been for the immortalising our bodily existence.
