“’Now, therefore, cursed shalt thou be upon the earth, which hath opened her mouth and received the blood of thy brother at thy hand. When thou shalt till it, it shall not yield to thee its fruit: a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be upon the earth.’ And Cain said to the Lord: ‘My iniquity is greater than that I may deserve pardon. Behold thou dost cast me out this day from the face of the earth, and I shall be hidden from thy face, and I shall be a vagabond and fugitive on the earth: every one, therefore, that findeth me, shall kill me.’ And the Lord said to him: ‘No, it shall not be so: but whosoever shall kill Cain, shall be punished sevenfold.’ And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, that whosoever found him should not kill him.”
All people seek the happiness of love, with the perfect expression of it being in God alone. To sin grievously is to alienate oneself entirely from God, and God here shows the consequences of sin: Without the love of God, life becomes a meaningless wandering upon the earth. No work remains: “And when I turned myself to all the works which my hands had wrought, and to the labours wherein I had laboured in vain, I saw in all things vanity, and vexation of mind, and that nothing was lasting under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 2:11), nothing is of worth when it does not carry love with it. A wandering from temporal matter to temporal matter is a life of exile, a sentence to which Cain is condemned. His punishment, however, is not one of pure condemnation, moving him into some state of total abandonment. His life becomes an example, that both he should learn from his grave mistake, and others should see and realize the consequences of acting against one’s fellow man. God uses even the greatest injustices to bring a good forward, even if it cannot be seen immediately. So Cain laments, and in his sin sees all people as sinful as himself, thinking that they will turn on him and slaughter him for his misdeeds. It shows that without the love of God, who lends His eyes to His people that they may see the beauty of their neighbor as He sees them, the view of one’s neighbor becomes skewed. Because Cain does not know mercy, and did not open his heart to receive it, he cannot fathom others acting mercifully towards him, and declares that his life is meaningless and filled with fear, because nothing is with him. So does the earth become a prison for the one that turns from God, with fleeting pleasures being the only thing to keep it from being crushing, but a happy transport to the heavenly homeland for the one that sees Him in all things and filled with his love. The Lord then proceeds to give Cain a “mark.” The common opinion is that this is a type of trembling and horrified countenance. The Lord does not strike down Cain, but uses him as the aforementioned example, and prefiguring what sin does to a soul. Actions against love paralyze the conscience, making it tremble with discomfort, and draw out reactions akin to smelling something rancid. Love gives a sweet fragrance: “Spikenard, and saffron, sweet cane and cinnamon, with all the trees of Libanus, myrrh and aloes with all the chief perfumes” (Song 4:14), and is a healing balm upon the soul. To flee from the merciful face of Jesus is to warp, exile, and fill with horror, but He looks to come to all, that He may restore what has been broken to the beauty it is called to. Finally, people would not come after Cain, given his condition, out of the pity he didn’t realize they had. Thinking that all would turn upon him for his actions, the human capacity to love instead is drawn to compassion for the lowly and broken. Thus, Cain shows you the state of a soul in mortal sin, warped, paralyzed, filled with horror, and it is your sacred duty to love that person. They just want to be loved in the way that God loves, and this is the commandment of the Lord: “A new commandment I give unto you: That you love one another ,as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (John 14:34).