Gregorio Christoforidis

He tends to people and gardens alike, hoping it will make him good in some other man's eyes. They question him and his faith. You do, too. The apparition will not be kind.

Gregorio was born in 1126.

He is 17 when Christoforos and Sybil die of disease. After the death of his father and sister, splitting the two houses, three vineyards, and 5 olive fields between the nunnery and the monastery, he leaves his secular life and enters a monastic one alongside his mother. This came to be at her decision, consumed by faith and fear of losing his now only son to any other dangers.

Gregorio stays at a monastery, built two centuries earlier, known for its leprosarium. There, he has not become a fully realised monk, handling smaller tasks like cleaning the sick and the gardens, in tandem with the monastic routine of prayer and community. The monastery is strict; it has to be to minimize contagion. Although warm, this contaminates the abbot’s personality, and he is sharp and open about his criticism of those he believes enter the monastery for secular reasons.

Gregorio did believe, but he didn’t feel any particular calling to this role. He’d rather serve God through common life. On top of it, the deaths, the grief, the move, the routine and the scrutiny allow skepticism to creep in him. How does God allow untimely deaths? How would God react to his mother's reasoning? Is a place where life withers a place truly loved by God? His prayers feel even more useless here.

He feels sick, numb. His thoughts are like a weight he can’t shape or put away, clouding his every moment. Nine months pass where he wakes, prays, cleans, eats, but he slips up, surely. He doesn’t remember when it started, but his skin feels tighter, rougher, and he is sin manifest. Acknowledging all the wrongs which he has committed every day of his life, whether in thought, word or deed, he asks for forgiveness from the depths of his heart for offending God and others and repents of his recent ways. Should anyone’s grace guide him to change, to sin no more, and to walk in the way of righteousness, he asks for their help.

In truth, there is no nerve damage, no blindness, just the skin and a vague disorientation. And an empty thirst he should manage, soon. He holds a goose from the abbey farm far too tightly. It is warm, and the feathers bring comfort to his numb hands. The bird goes quiet as he digs in. The first kill. No human being would have to do that to survive. With blood leaking from his mouth, quietly and unconsciously, he whispers:

Lord, you have gladdened our hearts in your creation, and we have rejoiced…