Holy Cross Day
John 12:20-33
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“So the LORD God said to the serpent: ‘Because you have done this, You are cursed more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you shall go, And you shall eat dust All the days of your life. And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel.” (Genesis 3:14-15) So did YHWH curse the serpent in the Garden, and in so doing, promise salvation for Adam and the woman and all that would be born of them—for you and for all the world, dear hearers. This promised salvation will come by way of the Seed of the Woman.
After this promise, Adam called his wife Eve, for she would be the mother of all the living. She bore him a son whom they named Cain, for she had acquired a man, the LORD. (cf. Genesis 4:1) She thought her son the promised Seed, but she was mistaken as this one was conceived and born in sin and unable to crush the serpent’s head. What he was able to do was kill his brother, and for that, he was cursed from the earth, a banishment similar to that of his parents. Adam knew his wife again, she conceived and bore another son, Seth, “For God has appointed another seed for me instead of Abel, whom Cain killed.” (Genesis 4:25b) Still, they did not get it.