Sixth Discourse. Earthly Kingdoms Tremble and Fall From Unbelief and Lawlessness

May 14, 1907

We recall and celebrate the day of the sacred anointing and coronation to the kingdom of our Most Pious Sovereign.

The past two or three years of his reign have been turbulent and full of inner sedition, and the royal crown with its purple mantle was nearly stained with blood recently. Lethal weapons were already prepared. Sleepless Providence preserved the life of the Tsar.

On this occasion I permit myself to transport my thoughts into ancient sacred history and relate an event suited and similar to our sorrowful condition, which occurred in the time of the judges of Israel.

Among the judges of the Hebrew people was one raised up by God for the governance and protection of the people against foreigners, famous for his faith, courage and love for his country—Gideon, who was engaged in farming. He saved the Hebrews by God’s help from the warlike Midianites, who sought to bring the Jews under their pagan godless yoke. When he died in deep old age, there remained after him seventy sons, for he had many wives; besides this he had a son by a maidservant, Abimelech. After the death of his father, Abimelech went to a city of his land and persuaded his relatives by his mother to endeavor to dispose the inhabitants of his city in his favor, pointing out to them that it would not be to their advantage to submit to seventy sons of Gideon, but that it would be better for them to acknowledge the authority of one, and besides one who was close to them by kinship. Now the inhabitants of that city (Shechem), Hebrew people, had already introduced among themselves the worship of a pagan deity, Baal, and had succeeded in building a temple to the Phoenician deity called Baal-berith, the protector of covenants and oaths. In these godless rebels, Abimelech found followers. They hailed him as their brother and gave him money from the treasury of their god. With a small sum he hired idle and homeless men, came to the house of his dead father and killed his brothers on one stone, excepting one younger brother, Jotham, who managed to hide. After that all the inhabitants of the city gathered in one place and there under the oak they made Abimelech king. At that very moment Jotham appeared unexpectedly on the neighboring mountain Gerizim and cried out in a loud voice: “Listen to me, inhabitants of Shechem, and may God listen to you.” When there was silence, he continued: “Once upon a time the trees resolved definitely to anoint a king over themselves. And they said to the olive tree: Be our king. The olive tree answered: Shall I give up my fatness, by which they honor God and men, and go to wave over the trees? The trees said to the fig tree: Come, you reign over us. The fig tree answered: Shall I give up my sweetness and my good fruit, and go to wave over the trees? The trees said to the vine: Come, you reign over us. And the vine answered: Shall I give up my wine, which gladdens God and men, and go to wave over the trees? Finally all the trees said to the bramble: Come, you reign over us. The bramble said: If you will truly anoint me king over you, then come, take refuge in my shadow (and what shade is there from a bramble?), but if not, let fire come out of the bramble and consume the cedars of Lebanon. Now think carefully, whether you have acted rightly in making Abimelech king, and whether you have rewarded Gideon and his house as you should (now we have the house of the Romanovs). For your sake my father risked his life for you and delivered you from your enemies, yet you have killed seventy sons of his, and have made Abimelech, the son of a maidservant, king over you? Let fire come out from Abimelech and burn you.” Having said this, Jotham fled and hid from his brother. Abimelech actually burned the inhabitants in the city tower who hid from his threat for disobedience, and Abimelech himself was killed by a woman who threw a piece of millstone at him. Thus the curse of Jotham overtook both the inhabitants of Shechem for their impiety and Abimelech for fratricide! (Judg 9)

O sons of Russia, celebrating the sacred anointing of the Tsar!

Will not the righteous judgment of God overtake our betrayers, who have attempted to slay the Tsar anointed by God to the kingdom, whose ancestors, anointed by God to the Russian kingdom of old, magnified it and raised it to the rank of a leading power in the world? And what would we, Russians, become without a Tsar? Our enemies would soon endeavor to destroy even the very name of Russia, for the Bearer and Guardian of Russia, after God, is the Sovereign of Russia, the Tsar Autocratic, and without him Russia is not Russia.

May God preserve Russia and the Tsar of Russia, if not for the sake of the Russians who have become unworthy through their great sins, then for the sake of the Orthodox Church, for the sake of all the saints, and for the sake of all the miracles revealed in Russia in times past, through the intercession and protection of the Mother of God and the holy wonderworking saints of Russia, of whom the Russian Church and Russian land are not lacking.

Amen.