"By God the kingdom reigns.

I have exalted the chosen one from among My people."

The Lord loves our Orthodox Russia, which was once called holy for a reason, and now sins so much and grievously before God, loves and lovingly punishes, and has mercy on us, and in the very punishment He shows the way to redemption. Only be attentive, Russian people, to the inscrutable ways of God's Providence, and you will clearly see in them the finger of God, showing you where and in what to seek salvation in your native country.

For several years now, as if a poisonous fog has covered our Russian land, and such spiritual turmoil has been going over it, such as it did not know in the days of the evil Tatars: is it necessary to speak in detail about what was happening in our days and is still happening in our Russia?.. All the commandments of God, blasphemy, blasphemy, all kinds of debauchery, and, finally, such crimes are forgotten, trampled underfoot, which bring the believing heart to horror, about which the hand refuses to write, the tongue is dumb to speak... The sinful heart feels that the wrath of God, like a terrible thunder from heaven, is about to burst out over us and there will be no mercy for us...

And so, in such a sorrowful time, when the Russian soul has suffered so much, exhausted by hopeless grief, the merciful God, like a loving Father, calls it to repentance, reassures it with His help, as if saying to it: look back, remember the days past, repent and be of good cheer! Thy fathers once sinned and sinned grievously; but they also knew how to repent, they turned to Me in repentance, and I had mercy on them, and My blessing rested upon them again. I am the same now as I was then: and now I am ready to open My fatherly embrace before you, I am ready to send you My blessing, only repent, abandon the path of perdition on which you stand!

Is not this voice of God heard in those bright memories which, one after another, arise and pass before us in bright visions precisely in our troubled days? Is it not God's manifest mercy to us, sinners, that the troubles of our time were allowed to pass because of our sins, not before these great anniversaries – the remembrance of grave misfortunes in Russia and God's great mercies to our ancestors?

A year ago, a wondrous image of an indestructible fighter arose before us, the Hieromartyr Patriarch Hermogen, who not only by his authoritative, formidable word, but also by his very deed, by his martyrdom, showed how the Russian people should defend their native Orthodox faith, their native Russian land, the native legacy of history and their ancestors. And now, as three hundred years ago, his last words to the Russian people, which have come down to us, resound imperiously in Russian hearts: "May mercy from the Lord God be upon those who go to purify the Muscovite state, and blessing from our humility, and may wrath be poured out from God on accursed traitors, and from our humility may they be cursed in this age and in the future!" that these words may resound eternally in the Russian conscience, in the Russian heart, as an inviolable testament of the Mother Church, the mother of old Russia, Holy and Orthodox Russia!

Throughout the past year of 1912, we were constantly reminded of the events of the great year of 1812. What a high upsurge of the people's spirit, of ardent love for the fatherland, our Russia experienced at that time! She endured, repented of her sins before God, and was renewed in spirit, and in repentant humility she ascribed everything to God alone: not to us, not to us, but to Thy name, O Lord, glory!

This year again takes us back to three hundred years ago, but the gloomy memories of the Time of Troubles, like dark clouds, are gradually receding into the background. The sky over Russia is being purified. All of it is drawn to its heart – to Moscow. Evidently, the mighty appeal of the suffering saint Hermogenes resonated deeply in the Russian soul. His suffering death surrounded the majestic image of His Holiness the Patriarch with the heavenly radiance of holiness and martyrdom for the faith and the fatherland; his testament to choose a natural, Russian, Orthodox Tsar, his reference to Mikhail Feodorovich Romanov became an immutable commandment for the Russian heart. Never before had the Russian heart felt so vividly, had it never been so clearly realized, that without the Tsar the Russian land could not live, that the Tsar was its father, its guardian angel, the Tsar was the soul, the heart of the Russian people, as popular wisdom says: without the Tsar, the land is a widow, without him the people are orphans; one sun in the sky — one white Tsar in Russia!

In the inscrutable ways of God's Providence, the righteous are the heralds of the will of God. Long before Patriarch Germogen, the Monk Gennadii of Kostroma, having arrived in Moscow, visited, at the invitation, the house of the boyarina Juliana Feodorovna, the wife of Roman Yuryevich Zakharyin, the great-grandmother of Mikhail Feodorovich, and, blessing her children: Daniel, Nikita and Anastasia, said to the latter: "You, beautiful and fruitful branch, will be our Tsarina." His prediction came true exactly: Anastasia was the first wife of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, the favorite of the Tsar and the people, and the reverent remembrance of her virtues, as is known, greatly contributed to the calling to the throne of her nephew's son, Mikhail Feodorovich.

Thus, even 70 years before this event, God's Providence had prepared the House of Romanov for the royal service of its native Russia, and the days closest to the Time of Troubles, the entire family of Nikita Romanovich, by God's permission, was as if prepared by suffering and the arduous feat of the cross for this lofty service. Michael's father and mother were slandered before Tsar Boris Godunov: they were forcibly separated and tonsured into monasticism, and both of them accepted this involuntary cross as the will of God and, in obedience to the will of God, bore it with the same zeal as those who voluntarily take upon themselves the monastic feat. Three of Mikhail's uncles, his father's brothers: Vasily, Alexander and Mikhail Nikitich, were exiled by Godunov to the far reaches of the northern region - Usolye, Pelym and Nyrob, where, after a painful year of exile, they were killed by merciless guards. Mikhail Nikitich was tortured especially hard: this hero was imprisoned in a dugout pit, fed only with stale bread and water, and, finally, starved to death, and according to other legends, simply killed... It is understandable why the great sorrower of the Russian land, His Holiness Patriarch Hermogenes, from his underground imprisonment, pointed to the family of the righteous sufferers of the Romanovs, as the only scepter worthy of receiving the descendants of the descendants of Equal-to-the-Apostles Vladimir. This pious family did not dream of royal honors: the Lord led them along the path of the cross to the great feat of royal service to the Russian people.

And now, the hour of God's will has come. At the beginning of February 1618, elected people from all cities of the Russian land gathered in Moscow. They gathered to elect a Tsar for their orphaned land and, according to the pious custom of ancient Russia, appointed a three-day fast and prayer in order to invoke God's blessing on their great work.

At the very first council meeting, it was unanimously decided: "Other German faiths should not elect anyone, but choose their own natural Russian." They began to choose their own; some pointed to one boyar, others to another... A nobleman from Galich submitted a written opinion that Mikhail Feodorovich Romanov was the closest in kinship to the former tsars: he should be elected Tsar. We remembered that the late His Holiness the Patriarch also mentioned this name. The Don ataman also came out and gave the same opinion. And Mikhail Feodorovich was proclaimed Tsar. But not all the electors had arrived in Moscow at that time, there were no noblest boyars, and the matter was postponed for two weeks. Finally, everyone gathered on February 21, the Sunday of Orthodoxy, and with a common voice confirmed this election. Then Archbishop Theodorite of Ryazan, Avraamiy Palitsyn of the Trinity cellarer and boyar Morozov went to the Lobnoye Mesto and asked the people who filled Red Square: whom do they want to be Tsar? And the people unanimously exclaimed: "Mikhail Feodorovich Romanov!" and the Council appointed Archbishop Theodorite, Abraham Palitsyn, three archimandrites and several eminent boyars to go to the newly-elected Tsar to ask him to welcome him to the capital city of Moscow to his royal throne.

On the outskirts of Kostroma, almost at the confluence of the Kostroma River with the Volga, stands the Ipatiev Monastery. It was founded in the 1330s by the Tatar prince Chet, who, returning along the Volga from the north, fell seriously ill here, vowed to be baptized if he recovered, and indeed recovered, was baptized and built this monastery. This was the ancestor of Boris Godunov, and so, by the fate of God, in the monastery founded by the ancestor of the persecutor of the Romanovs, Godunov, that God-blessed youth from the House of Romanov, whom the Lord had destined to become the first Tsar of this family persecuted by Godunov, finds refuge. Thus the truth of God triumphs, even in apparently unimportant circumstances, bearing witness to the immutable ways of God's Providence.