THE
DESCENDANTS OF CAIN
"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!" (Matt 23:13-16, 23-29). Their sins
could be reduced to one, but that is the most poisonous, the least pardonable
of all sins: the sin against the Spirit, the sin against Truth, the betrayal of
Truth and Spirit, the laying waste of the only pure wealth which the world
possesses. Thieves steal perishable goods, assassins kill the corruptible body,
prostitutes defile flesh destined to corruption; but the hypocrites, the
Pharisees discredit the Word of the absolute, steal the promises of eternity,
assassinate the soul. Everything in them is fabrication: their dress and their
talk, their teaching and their practice. What they say is contradicted by what
they do. Their inner life does not correspond to what they choose to show.
Secret Neanderthal words gives the lie to their every claim. They are
hypocrites because they cover themselves with fringed mantles and with wide
phylacteries, to be seen in public places, and love to be called "Master," and all the time
they have hidden the keys of knowledge and have shut the gates of the Kingdom of
Heaven, and neither go in themselves nor suffer others to enter. Hypocrites
because they make long prayers in public and devour the houses of widows, and
take advantage of the weak and the desolate. Hypocrites because they wash and
clean the outside of the platter and the cup, and inside they are full of warfare
and extortion. Hypocrites because they give their attention to minutia of rites
and purifications and have no care for greater things: they strain at a gnat
and swallow a camel. Hypocrites because they observe the smallest commandments
and do not obey the only one which is of value: they pay promptly the tithe of
mint and anise and cumin and rue, but they have not justice, mercy and faith in
their hearts. Hypocrites because they build monuments to the prophets and
garnish the sepulchers of righteous men of old times, but persecute the
righteous men of today, and are preparing to kill the prophets. "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers,
how can ye escape the damnation of hell? Wherefore, behold I sent unto you
prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and
crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute
them from city to city: That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed
upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias
son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple, and the altar." (Matt.
23:35).
They have accepted the
inheritance of Cain. They are the descendants of Cain. They kill brothers,
execute saints, and crucify prophets. And, like Cain, God has stamped upon
their faces a sign—the mysterious sign of immortality. They cannot be killed
because theirs are the hands which must kill. The fugitive fratricide was saved
by this sign among early men, and the murderous Pharisees will be saved through
all the centuries because God needs them for the high works of His justice
which seems foolishness and madness to the eyes of little-minded men. An
eternal decree, not revealed to most men, decrees death and the most atrocious
death to all who would be like God. But the simple man could never assassinate
a saint, nor even a sinner, a miraculous cocoon of potential sanctity. And the
saint would no longer be a saint if he took the life of another saint, the only
brother given him by the Father. So the indestructible race of the Pharisees
was created for all centuries and for all peoples, men who are never simple
like children and who never know the way of salvation, those who are not
visibly sinners, but who are from head to foot the incarnation of the ugliest
sin, those who wish to appear saints and who hate real saints. God has made them
fitting instruments of an appalling and necessary massacre; to play the part
of executioners of perfect men. Faithful to this command, invulnerable as
inhabitants of Hell, marked like Cain, immortal as hypocrisy and cruelty, they
have survived all the empires and all the overthrows of empire. With different
faces, with different garments, with different rules and pretexts, they have
covered the face of the earth, stubborn and prolific, up to the present day.
And when they have not been able to kill with nails and with fire, with axes
and with knives, they have used tongue and pen with the utmost success.
Jesus, while He spoke to them in the
great open courtyard crowded with witnesses, knew that He spoke to His judges,
and to those who would be, through intermediate persons, the real authors of
His death. By speaking out on this day, He justified His later silence before
Caiaphas and Pilate. He had condemned them and they would condemn Him; He had
judged them first and had nothing more to add when they wished to judge Him.
Images of death came to His lips as He
described them to themselves: vipers and tombs, treacherous black vipers, which
as soon as you approach them pour into your blood all the poison hidden in
their fangs. Whited sepulchers, fair without but within full of dead men's
bones and all uncleanness.
The Pharisees who stood before Jesus,
and all those who have legitimately descended from them, are glad to hide themselves
in the shadow of the dead, to prepare their venom. Cold as a snake's skin, as
the stone of a tomb, neither the heat of the sun, nor the warmth of love, nor
the fires of Hell can ever warm them. They know all the words save one, the
word of Life.
"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are as
graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of
them." (Luke
11:44) The only one aware of this was Jesus—and it was because of this that He
was not to remain more than two days in the sepulcher which they were preparing
for Him.
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