Our Purpose

This week's reading is once again from the first book of the Testament, the Maledictions of Longinus. Thirty-three years had passed since Longinus became Damned and he had at last gone to the tomb of Christ and seen that it was empty.

6 And there appeared to me a blinding light, and I cowered in the tomb, thinking the sun had risen, but there stood before me archangel Vahishtael, with black wings and the heads of a calf, a serpent and a wolf, and holding a spear like the Spear I still held, and he spoke to me, and said:
7 “Fear me, Longinus. For I am the messenger of your purpose.
8 “The Damned are many, and they are denied salvation.
9 “But the Damned serve as the sign to humanity of the price of sin, and to make mortals fear and to understand that their lives are brief and full of pain, and they can only see the most pitiful reflection of the glories of Heaven, for they do not see clearly, but see as if through a blurred mirror,
10 and the Damned do not see through the mirror at all.
11 “And it is the lot of the Damned to take the blood of mortals, that mortals might know that they will die, and that their only salvation is in the next life.
12 “And it is your lot to go and give this message to all of the Damned, that they might know God’s purpose for them and rejoice.
13 “Now go, Longinus, and spread the Word to all the Damned.”

14 And the angel left me, and I rejoiced, for I knew that I was once lost, and
now I was found, and that I had found my purpose.
15 And I left that place. 

(Mal. 14:6-15)

It is no error that this is the closing chapter of the Malediction of Longinus. In life, a terrible curse lay upon Longinus, for he was born to do what he did and become as he became. In the first thirty-three years of his Damnation though, he was lost and without purpose, blind, even as many of us have been in the past. Though damnation and torment remain after this message from Vahishtael, there is now something more. The malediction, the curse, upon Longinus has ended, for now he has a purpose that is known to him.

Here, in the words of Vahishtael, the messenger of God, we find our own purpose to this very night. We have the duty to steer mortals towards salvation and the glories of Heaven. This world, in which we are ageless, undying, and over which we are given dominion, is but a brief stop for the living. It is our obligation to, through terror and suffering, remind them of the ephemeral nature of this world so that their eyes will remain fixed on the next one.

Sum Sanctus,

Simon Patterson

Augustus Inquisitor de Lacus Magni