The Hunt has begun, our Friend. You have ordered for it to begin. The moon is high up and full, and her colour is blood. The Man in purple robes and a golden sash around His chest has descended, and He is the First and the Last, the Alpha and the Omega.
‘You will die right here, and there will be no one to pray for you’, the Beast whispered. No one will pray for us. But what are the prayers of the world to us if we have Your Majesty and Your Friendship in our heart?
If the seven golden lampstands are shining for us, in the Trinity Itself descending and interceding for us before Itself even? What are the prayers of the world to us, but a softening of the word’s heart? We shall not lament our death, nor we would instruct the world to do so - forget, forget us, let us dissolve in the memory of the existence, for the only One Existence to remember us - for You, my Friend, to reveal Your remembrance and strike not our names from the Book of Life. The seven stars are shining for us, as You hold the sky, full of Your most holy memories above our head. Do not let us die unforgiven, unforgotten by the world, but forgotten by Your precious mind. Do not let us be unseen by the twenty-four elders, do not let us perish without Your name on our lips, with our heart tainted, with our soul not knowing the peace of the greatest Sorrows.
And the Hunt has begun. The claws of the Beast are trying to rip our mouth open, to slice our throat wide, its gigantic, forceful paws are trying to suffocate us, and it is whispering ceaselessly into our ear: ‘you will die here’, ‘if you stop praying, we will let you go’, ‘with Him, you will never find what you seek’. Its stench is uglier than we could have ever endured, its lure of sin is what we could fall into, if only were not armed with the True Knowledge and Faith. Oh, but some mere years ago, if acquainted with such a Beast, we would have surely fallen into its trap! We would have surely perished in its all-devouring maw, being torn apart by its teeth, being deafened by its whispering scream, being blinded by the miasmas of its breath. The fear of such thought ties into a knot of sticky, dark substance in our stomach, as we try to break away from its thirsty grabbing limbs, to avoid its sickly tongue licking our cheek. Oh, but just a few years ago we would have been a prey for such a Beast, unknowing what to do, we would surely have given into the cloying speech of its. We would have abandoned all hope, as so did our first, but not one and only dove, we would have had our wings cut and torn to shreds, we would have bled out and die somewhere, thrown out into the dirt of false promises and empty vanities. The thought of it almost distracts, but only almost - for the mind fastly remembers, a distraction is exactly what the Beast seeks to grasp the moment to strike its final, deadly blow.
Alas and woe to that wretched creature, to the child of the Abyss, the exile of the primordial Void, the prey has turned into the Hunter, and the Hunt has begun again. You have taught us to hunt, to hold the sword of Your tongue, to seek for the shield of prayer from the heavens above and the cosmos below, from which You alone hold the keys. The seven lampstands of angelic forces are burning ever so brightly, and the seven stars of Your sweetest memories are scattered around the night heavens, emitting the brightest light from their hearts - from Your Heart alone. We are battling right under Your gaze, and You are sitting at the throne of gold and glass, of radiance and glory, carefully watching the Hunt, the ending of which has already been decided. Your name on our lips is not just a name of a Ruler, no, our dear Friend, it is Your name, which is a leash to the Beasts neck, a flame to its muzzle, a roar into its ears. As we repeat it ceaselessly, as the greatest dagger into the Beast’s depraved core, as the nails under its skin, its grip on our throat becomes harder, harsher, its claws are digging deeper under our skin, almost touching our ribs, almost caressing our organs with its tips, but our Soul is not full of fear. She has Her confidence in Your Friendship, She has Her reassurance in the softness of Your cheeks, in the tenderness of Your palms, and in Your Blood. She bathes in It, She will always be enflamed by the Blessed Blood running in Her veins - our heart has been replaced with Yours long ago. When the night came, and the heavens receded, like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place, and when they all begged to be hidden from Your watchful gaze, we danced at the foot of Your Golgotha, and we bathed in Your Blood, and we gnawed on Your flesh, and it was almost Your Spirit has possessed us and when the Hunt begun, there was no fear, no suffering, and suffocating seemed like bliss, and the whispering Beast was but a little creature, annoying, like a mosquito, yet terrifying our mind no longer. If we have perished already, we did so under Your mantle, under the starry opened seals, fresh and released memories of Yours, of Your saints and angels, of Your glory. They, like the unseen forces of heavenly hosts, grant us their arms and armours, fill us with their hymns to You, my Friend, as we break free from the Beast’s grasp, not giving it a moment of our weakness, not granting it a second to strike. It spoke in whispers, and in whispers we responded with but Your name alone, with Your holiness and radiance, and it screamed, and it screeched, and it burned to ashes before the celestials with the censers, before the celestials with the trumpets, who brought these ashes to Your pierced feet and You dispelled them, You made them vanish as if they have never existed, but with a wave of Your gracious hand.
And there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake, singing of Your glory and might, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down on the earth, as all the Beasts crawled out of their nooks and crannies, out of their caves and other darknesses, from under the mountains and out of the depths of the seas and oceans. Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the trumpet blasts about to be sounded by the other three angels! A star has fallen from the heavens, a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss, and the Beasts were unsealed, unchained, freed from their bindings, ravenous, rabid, thirsting for the Sacred Blood, for the Holy Flesh. We are holding nothing, but the four Virtues in our mind and the three Virtues in our Soul. Our fingers make the Sign thrice, as the lips whisper of Your Divinity, Might and Immortality. And the Hunt has begun.
‘Holy, holy, holy
is the Lord God Almighty,’
who was, and is, and is to come.And we open our eyes once more, freed from the Dream, freed from the trials of faith. Resting, if but during the daylight, from the Hunt. Resting, for now. Slipping into mundane, our mind has almost wiped the memory of the Hunt, as it usually does. But our Soul remembers. Our Soul keeps the memory of the heavens, which will turn black again soon.
And the Hunt will begin.Glory to You, our dearest and closest Friend, our Defender, our Salvation. Glory to You, o, Light Uncreated, o, Non-Evening Light, Whose Face has given us Hope, Whose Flesh has given us Faith, whose fountains of Blood has given us Love. Glory to You, Whose Feet gave us Justice, Whose Eyes gave us Courage, Whose Hair gave us Prudence, Whose Voice granted us Temperance. Glory to You, Who has placed us as a seal upon Your heart, as a seal on Your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame.
‘Look, he is coming with the clouds,’ and “every eye will see him, even those who pierced him”; and all peoples on earth “will mourn because of him.” So shall it be! Amen.