St. Michael's Lent 2026 - Reading #29 - Lineage
Reading
Cain first, then Abel — the city of men before the city of God. So also in every soul.
Augustine traces it: "Of these two first parents of the human race, then, Cain was the first-born, and he belonged to the city of men; after him was born Abel, who belonged to the city of God. For as in the individual the truth of the apostle's statement is discerned, 'that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual,' whence it comes to pass that each man, being derived from a condemned stock, is first of all born of Adam evil and carnal, and becomes good and spiritual only afterwards, when he is grafted into Christ by regeneration: so was it in the human race as a whole. When these two cities began to run their course by a series of deaths and births, the citizen of this world was the first-born, and after him the stranger in this world, the citizen of the city of God, predestinated by grace, elected by grace, by grace a stranger below, and by grace a citizen above."
Natural first; spiritual afterward — by grace.
Then the builders: "Accordingly, it is recorded of Cain that he built a city, but Abel, being a sojourner, built none. For the city of the saints is above, although here below it begets citizens, in whom it sojourns till the time of its reign arrives, when it shall gather together all in the day of the resurrection; and then shall the promised kingdom be given to them, in which they shall reign with their Prince, the King of the ages, time without end."
Cain builds; Abel sojourns.
Reflection
Two consequences for a father, and both are liberating. First, do not be shocked by the Cain in your children, or in yourself. The old nature is standard issue, the starting point of every saint who ever lived — that from which we must begin, but in which we need not necessarily remain. Your job is not to have produced sinless children; it is to keep grafting them, relentlessly, onto Christ — through baptism, the sacraments, prayer, and your own visible repentance.
Second, hold your building loosely. Everything you construct here — the house, the business, the name — is a Cain-city, temporary by design. The lineage that endures is not what you build for your children but what you transmit to them: citizenship above.
Deeds and titles expire. Grace, handed on, reigns time without end.