On the Purpose of the Damned
From LanceaSanctum
Delivered to Sanctified world-wide on 22 September, 2006, by Father-General Aroex Xaviar Bastian Valario de la Cruz.
Brothers and Sisters:
In these modern nights, all too often we forget our purpose, surrounded as we are by so many distractions and so much work to do. We should always keep in mind that the chief end of the Damned is to glorify God and to perform His works. God directly gave us rules that we can perform this chief end, as contained in the Testament of Longinus.
The Testament teaches us what we believe of God, and wha God requires of the Damned. God decreed his eternal purpose, according to the counsel of his will and for his own glory, and he has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass. God executes his decrees in the works of creation and providence.
Among His works of providence was the special act God exercised towards man in the estate wherein he was created. When God had created man, He entered into a covenant of life with him, upon condition of perfect obedience; forbidding him to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, upon pain of death. Through the act of free will, the first parents fell from that estate and sinned against God.
But what is sin? Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God. The sin of the first parents was in eating the forbidden fruit, and thus did all Adam's posterity fall with this first transgression. Adam made the covenant with God for all mankind. With the fall, mankind was cast into an estate of sin and misery. In the guilt of Adam's first sin, mankind lacked original righteousness and became corrupt in his whole nature. From this, and all the actual transgressions which proceed from it, do we have the Original Sin, by which all mankind lost communion with God. They are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever.
God did not leave all mankind to perish in the estate of sin and misery. Out of His goodness, from all eternity, He elected some to everlasting life, allowing them to enter a covenant of grace and so deliver them out of the estate brought on by Original Sin, through the salvation of the Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Being the eternal Son of God, Christ became man and so was, and continues to be, God and man in two distinct nature, and one person, forever. Christ, the Son of God, became man, by taking to himself a true body, and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the virgin Mary, and born of her, yet without sin. As a man and the Redeemer of Man, Christ executes the offices of prophet, priest, and king, both in his state of humiliation and his state of exaltation. As the prophet, Christ revealed to man, by his Word and Spirit, the will of God for mankind's salvation. As the priest, Christ offered himself up as a sacrifice to satisfy divine prophecy, reconciling man to God and making a continual intercession on behalf of all mankind. As a king, Christ subdued man to himself, in ruling and defending manking, and in restraining and conquering all his enemies.
It is here that our sacred covenant began, as part of Christ's humiliation. Born a man, and in that low condition, made under the law, Christ underwent the miseries of life on earth, the wrath of God, and finally the cursed death upon the cross by the Spear of Longinus. He was buried, and continued under the power of death for a time.
Through this humiliation, however, came Christ's exaltation. Christ's exaltation consisted in his rising again from the dead on the third day, in ascending up into heaven, in sitting at the right hand of God the Father, and in coming to judge the world at the last day.
Though we are Damned, we are made partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ for mankind, by being the drinkers of mankind, driving them back to God's light as the wolf drives the straying sheep back to the shepherd, as part of the effectual application of the redemption to man. The hand of Longinus was that which enabled Christ purchase the redemption he offered to man, by the working of the Spirit in man's faith, uniting man to Christ.
As the Damned, we have an effectual calling to assist in this unity. It is our duty to convince man of his sin and misery, enlightening his mind in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing his will. By this we persuade and enable man to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to man in the gospel. We that partake in Damnation are effectually called upon to partake of justification, chastisement, and sanctification, and the several acts which in this damnation do either accompany or flow from them.
Justification is an act of God's plan, wherein He charges us to punish all sins, and to drive man into being righteous in His sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to man, and received by faith alone. Chastisement is an act of God's plan, whereby we are made into instruments of his will, and act as his holy monsters. Sanctification is the work of God's plan, whereby we are renewed in our purpose after the will of God, and are enabled more and more in our damnation to further his purpose.
By carrying out our effectual calling, we see the benefits that do accompany or flow from justification, chastisement, and sanctification. These are assurance of God's will, righteousness of conscience, obedience to the Holy Ghost, and perseverance therein to the end. But for all that our effectual calling is part of God's plan, we are still Damned, and face consequences of our own at death.
The souls of Damned are sent to the fire of hell, there to be tormented until the end of days; and their bodies, being still Damned, shall become ash, till the resurrection. At the resurrection, the Damned, being cursed and in a state of sin, shall be openly judged, and their destination determined for all eternity based upon how they carried out God's will. Despite this, we still have the duty God requires of the Damned, manifested as obedience to his revealed will.
God's revealed will, as passed to us in the Testament, his moral law for the Damned, is summarily comprehended in the Commandments of Longinus. The Commandments of Longinus tell us that we have a purpose in serving God; we are no longer mortal; we are placed above man; we are limited in our powers by God; and our purpose is to serve.
Despite having these words from God through Longinus, none of the Damned, since the curse, is able to perfectly to keep the Commandments of Longinus, but does nightly break them in thought, word, and deed. Repentance unto death is our punishment, whereby the Damned, out of a true sense of his sin, and apprehension of the judgment of God through Christ, doth, with grief and hatred of his sin, pays penance for it until the resurrection.
Thus, even in our Damned and imperfect state, we must continue to do the Will of God, spreading the ordinary means of his communication with the Damned by His ordinances, particularly the Word, the sacraments, and prayer, all of which are made effectual for the Lancea Sanctum.
The Spirit of God makes the reading, but especially the preaching, of the Word an effectual means of convincing and converting other Damned, and of building them up to assist his plan, through faith, unto the resurrection. The sacraments become effectual means of penance, not from any virtue in them, or in him that administers them; but only by the divine will of God, and the working of his Spirit in them that by faith receive them.
And so, brothers and sisters, our mission is a simple one: Know that you are Damned. Know that you have a purpose. Drive the sheep back to the light. Go forth and spread the Word to the rest of the Damned.
Sum Sanctus.
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