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.

His mother, the "great old woman" Martha Ioannovna, was also inseparable from Michael. They knew nothing about what was happening at the Moscow Zemsky Sobor; it did not occur to young Michael that the lot of the great royal service could fall on him. And was it possible for him, a modest youth of sixteen, to dream of a royal crown, when there were many eminent and noble boyars who had served the fatherland with honor in the difficult time of great national disasters? At that time, Michael's sorrowful thoughts were involuntarily carried away in a completely different direction – there, to the land of Lithuania, where his beloved father, Metropolitan Philaret Nikitich Romanov of Rostov, languished in heavy captivity. It is clear that the same thoughts and feelings were shared with him by his pious mother.

Meanwhile, on March 13, the council's envoys arrived in Kostroma. The next day, on the memorable day of March 14, from early morning all the streets of Kostroma were covered with numerous crowds of people. With a procession of the cross, the cathedral ambassadors went to the Ipatiev Monastery, to the young chosen one, on whom all the hopes of the long-suffering native land now rested. At the place where the Kostroma River flows into the Volga, the Kostroma clergy joined the procession with the miraculous Theodore Icon of the Mother of God. When the solemn procession approached the holy gates of the monastery, Mikhail Feodorovich modestly came out to meet it with his old mother. The procession stopped. The Moscow ambassadors bowed low to the future Tsar and announced to him why they had been sent. "With great sorrow and tears," as the chronicler says, "he answered the ambassadors that he did not want to be Tsar, and his mother Martha Ioannovna added that she would not give her son her parental blessing for this. And both of them wanted to retire to their chambers. It cost the ambassadors no small effort to persuade them to enter with them into the cathedral church of the Most Holy Trinity. Here they were given letters from the Council and began to beat Michael's forehead: "to have pity on the remnant of the Christian race, not to despise the nation's tearful weeping, to accept the Russian kingdom, plundered from the enemies, under his high right hand of the Sovereign and to invite him to his royal throne in the capital city of Moscow."

But young Michael did not want to hear about it; and his mother told the ambassadors that "her son is not yet of full age, and Russian people of all ranks were faint-hearted and did not serve the former sovereigns directly; here it is difficult for a born Tsar to cope with them, and what will her son, a minor youth, do with them?"

Marfa also pointed out that "the Muscovite state is now completely ruined, that the future Tsar will have nothing with which to grant his servants, and to stand against his enemies. And besides, his father, Mikhailov, Metropolitan Philaret, is now in captivity of the king in Lithuania, in great oppression, and as soon as the king knows that his son has become the Tsar in Moscow, he immediately orders that some evil be done to him."

Elderess Martha spoke for a long time; with tears in their eyes, the ambassadors listened to her, and when she fell silent, they again began to beat the forehead of Mikhail Feodorovich, begging him that "he would not despise the conciliar prayer of the entire Russian land, that he was chosen according to God's will, and not according to his wishes, that God had put such a thing in the hearts of everyone, from the least to the greatest, in Moscow and in all the cities."

For six whole hours the conciliar envoys stood before Michael and prayed to him that "he would not take away the will of God," but Michael still did not agree. Finally, the eldest of the ambassadors, Archbishop Theodorite, said to him decisively: "Do not resist, Sire, the will of God; We did not undertake this feat; The Most-Pure Mother of God Herself loved you: be ashamed of Her coming," and at these words the saint pointed to the miraculous face of the Queen of Heaven on the icon, called the Theodore Icon. Then the old woman herself, Mikhailov's mother, said to her humble son: "It is clear that this is God's work, my child, it is necessary to submit to the will of the Almighty!"

With sobs, Michael prostrated himself before the icon of the Mother of God and, shedding tears, said: "If it be Thy will, I am Thy servant! Save and keep me!"