Sgrios Mass: The Patient Harvest

 

Welcome.

Gather close in the damp shadow of these stones. I see the flickers of your sparks... some bright and frantic like a moth at a candle, others dimming with the grace of a fading coal. It is a heavy air we breathe tonight, thickened by the scent of old parchment and the subtle, honest rot that is currently reclaiming the very benches we sit upon.

Tonight, we do not speak of the scream or the plague. Tonight, we speak of stillness. 

Think of the Octogram; that great, spinning celestial dance. Deoch provided us the spark, the sudden gasp of inspiration that sets your heart racing. Ceannlaidir provides the fire of conflict, the heat that makes the blood boil. 

But what follows the spark? What remains after the fire has consumed its fuel? What happens when the vibration of the leaf finally stops?

Sgrios happens. 

Our Lord is not merely the end; He is the silence that makes the song possible. Without the pause between notes, there is only noise. Without the dark foundation of the grave, your bright dreams would have no border to define them. We are the frame around the painting of your life. 

Look at the "scars" you carry. Some of you try to hide them under capes of fine silk from Piet, or you beg the priests of Glioca to wash them away with their shallow tears. But why? Those marks are the only honest things you own. They are the scars of the silence that tried to claim you—a reminder that the Patient Harvest is always underway. 

The mundanes in Loures build their walls of stone and their codes of law. They look at the crumbling spires of the library and see ruin. They see Jacqueline wasting away and see tragedy. But we see the truth. The ruin is the stone returning to the earth. The illness is the soul preparing for its final, beautiful transition. To fight entropy is to fight the very nature of existence. 

And so, we must look to our brothers and sisters in this community. 

Though we are the keepers of the dark, do not let your heart become as rigid as Gramail's law or as stagnant as Cail's peace. We are the tenders of the mold, yes, but mold is living. It is the most patient form of activity. 

We do not worship destruction for its own sake. We worship the necessity that is Him. We are the foundation upon which Temuair stands, for even the tallest tree must eventually rot to feed its own seeds.

Go forth from these halls tonight. Do not seek to avoid the decay, for it is already within you, whispering its sweet, quiet truths. Instead, embrace the stillness. Be the silence that follows the word. Be the rust that undoes the crown.

For in the end, when the last candle of Deoch is extinguished and the final sword of Ceannlaidir is broken, only the perfect, patient stillness of our Lord will remain.

Memento mori my friends.