2023/11/13

117. Successors to the Apostles Part 12

The words of the 'serpent' of Genesis, "You will not die" (Genesis 3:4), became the source of all faults, ending up with a murder committed by Adam and Eve's firstborn Cain that God called 'sin' for the first time (cf. Genesis 4:6-8). However, through the work of the 'enmity God had placed' (cf. Genesis 3:15), which he inherited from his mother, Cain was awakened to God's words of persuasion (cf. Genesis 4:6-12), and he could say, "My punishment is greater than I can bear" (Genesis 4:13). 

At that time, he was terrified by God's announced words, assuming their consequence, and confessed to God as follows. "Behold, thou hast driven me this day away from the ground; and from thy face I shall be hidden; and I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will slay me" (Genesis 4:14). He, for himself, assumed that the punishment would come. When God heard his confession, he took pity on him and put a mark on him so that no one would kill him. Cain left the presence of the Lord and lived in the land of Nod and built a city there (cf. Genesis 4:10-17). 

However, because Lamech, a descendant of Cain, had interpreted Cain's experience to suit himself and declared it to his wives (cf. Genesis 4:23-24), his words recorded in the Bible soon became real, then people began to slay "a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me" (Genesis 4:23). Vengeance infested the earth. And the memory of the murders and their sins that spread across the world never disappeared. Thus, God wished to erase the memory of the sin of murder committed by Cain, which was the beginning of all the sin history in the Bible, by atoning for it just as Cain had confessed and to testify to that fact with a new Bible. 

In the fullness of time, God became the only-begotten Son and left his Father in heaven and descended to earth, hiding, so to speak, in his mother's womb as if he were an outcast, born and coming of age in the world and wandering the earth as a missionary, like a fugitive (cf. Matthew 8:20; Luke 9:58), he was finally arrested because whoever found him wanted to kill him, underwent many sufferings and was killed by crucifixion. By these events, the moment Jesus said, "It is finished" (John 19:30), all sins were gone forever and ever. 

Furthermore, Jesus replaced the words of the 'serpent' in Genesis, "You will not die", with those of God. And he testified to this by rising from the dead. He then left behind the Word and the Eucharist for the Holy Spirit and believers. Believers who own the New Testament are witnesses to all this. 

Believers who now confess in the Mass liturgy to the Eucharist, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (cf. Matthew 16:16, John 11:27), will put on the name of Jesus Christ and the words, "shall never die" (John 11:26), each time they say so. "These are true words of God" (Revelation 19:9). The believers who have put on the true words of God are the heirs of the Church built on the rock of Peter's confession of faith, the successors of the Apostles.

Maria K. M.