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!"

No one was able to refrain from tears at this solemn moment: the archpastor wept, the ambassadors wept, and everyone who was in the cathedral at that time cried.

The appointed Tsar stood up, turned to the ambassadors and said: "If this is the will of God, so be it!"

From that sacred moment, when the young Michael gave himself entirely to the will of God, he became the great Tsar and Tsar of all the Russian land. The pious eldress Martha took her son by the hand and together with him reverently knelt before the grace-filled face of the Queen of Heaven and quietly said: "Into Thy most pure hands I commend my child; Guide him to the path of truth, arrange for him what is useful, and with him for all Orthodox Christianity!"

Thus the "great old woman" blessed her favorite for the great feat of royal service; thus the accession of Michael to the throne took place. Theodorovich, the savior of the faith and the kingdom — thus the Lord, the King of kings, finally blessed the much-suffering Russian land with the gift of a Tsar after His own heart, the blessed ancestor of the now reigning House of Romanov. "And on that day, says the chronicler, there was great joy in Kostroma, and the feast of the miraculous Theodore Icon was composed."

And there was great joy not only in Kostroma at that time: both Moscow and the entire Russian land rejoiced with Kostroma. At last she survived her fierce grief, at last her red sun rose, without which there was no one to warm her, much sorrowful, there was no one to take care of her! And then the Russian people, exhausted by the adversities of the interregnum, breathed freely.

How deeply this election of young Mikhail Feodorovich was perceived by the hearts of the people as a great mercy of God to the Russian people, as a clear indication of God, is evidenced by the great self-sacrificing feat of a simple peasant Ivan Susanin. He appeared in turn as God's chosen one, in order to seal with his martyr's blood the people's love for the Tsar, the chosen one after God's heart. Here is what Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich, whom he saved, says about his holy feat in his charter given to Susanin's son-in-law, the peasant Bogdan Sabinin: "As We, the Great Sovereign, were in Kostroma (that is, within the Kostroma borders), and at that time Polish and Lithuanian people came to the Kostroma district, and his father-in-law, Bogdanov, Ivan Susanin, was seized by the Lithuanian people and he was tortured with great immeasurable torments, and they tortured him, where We, the Great Sovereign, were at that time, and he, Ivan, knowing about Us, where We were at that time, enduring immeasurable tortures from those Polish and Lithuanian people, did not tell those Polish and Lithuanian people about Us, the Great Sovereign, and the Polish and Lithuanian people tortured him to death." "Thus, as if the capital of all Orthodox Russia, this eternally glorious peasant sealed the people's love for the Tsar-Father: alone, without associates, he defended the salvation of the entire Russian land. Mikhail Feodorovich was the last of the Romanov family: there was no one to replace him, and which of the boyars the Russian people loved as much as the Romanovs, and it is terrible to think what would have happened to the Russian land if the enemy's infernal plan had succeeded?..

On May 2, 1613, the young Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich solemnly entered Moscow, blessed by the prayers of the jubilant people.