It all began...

With that pilgrimage to St. Nicholas’s monastery. The vision of the Virgin. The gift from The Blessed Mother and Her child. A set of prayer beads, used for the recitation of the Jesus Prayer. It did something to me that I’ve only just begun to understand. I was 28 at the time. I drank, swore, and generally was a total ass. That all changed. I was a new man.

I swore off , not because of any religious reasoning but because it dulled my thinking. I discovered that I now had an encyclopedic knowledge of the Good Book although previously I could neither read nor write. Not only that, but I received what I can only describe as divine revelation, an understanding of the teachings of the Christ that I had failed to grasp before.

I began to preach, spreading the Word as I now understood it. Slowly the Word spread and through it many of the peasantry began to come to hear my oratory. Those who heard believed, and in believing followed me. I began to travel the far reaches of Mother Russia, teaching as I went, gathering more and more followers. I found that with the belief of my flock, my herd (as I was later to learn was the operative term), that I could lay on hands and take the pain of others into myself, devouring it and any sickness or ailments that plagued them, and returning to them an ecstatic feeling of peace. Those that I healed became my most fervent followers, and new converts arrived every day.

I began to piece together what was happening. The gifts from God that I was the beneficiary of seemed to wax and wane with the numbers of followers who were near me. While in Sankt Peterburg for example, I had a crowd of over a hundred hanging on my every word when out of nowhere a sparrow fell dead at my feet. I somehow knew I could return it to life, so I gripped my prayer beads and raised my eyes to the sky, then lay two fingers on the birds head. It flew into the sky as if a young bird again.

That particular incident was a large part in bringing me here tonight, surrounded by those I call my friends and drinking this cyanide laced Madeira.