Word XIV. On the Day Commemorating and Celebrating the Sacred Anointing and Coronation to the Throne of Our Most Pious Sovereign Emperor Nicholas Alexandrovich of All Russia

May 14, 1907.

“«Those enemies of Mine, said the Lord, who did not want Me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them before Me». (Lk 19:27).”

We remember and celebrate the day of the sacred anointing and coronation to the throne of our Most Pious Sovereign.

Troubled and full of inner sedition have been these two or three years of his reign, and the very royal crown and purple robe were very nearly recently stained with blood. The deadly weapons were already prepared. Watchful Providence preserved the life of the Tsar.

On this occasion, allow me to carry my thought back to the ancient sacred history of the Hebrews, and to relate one event, fitting and similar to our own sorrowful condition, that occurred in the days of the judges of Israel.

Among the judges of the Hebrew people was, among others, one raised up by God to govern and defend them from foreigners, famed for his faith, courage, and love of his fatherland, Gideon, a man of the soil. By God’s help he saved the Hebrews from the warlike Midianites, who wished to subject the Jews to their pagan, godless yoke. When he died at a great age, he left behind him seventy sons, for he had many wives; besides these, he had a son by a maidservant, Abimelech. — After his father’s death, Abimelech came to a certain city of his own land, and besought his kinsmen on his mother’s side to try to win the inhabitants over to his side, pointing out to them that it would not be to their advantage to be subject to Gideon’s seventy sons, but better to acknowledge over them the rule of one who was close to them by kinship. Now the inhabitants of that city (Shechem), Hebrews though they were, had already introduced among themselves the worship of the pagan god Baal, and had managed to build a temple to the Phoenician god called Baal-berith, that is, the keeper of covenants and oaths. Among these people, apostates from God, Abimelech found his supporters. They hailed him as their brother and gave him money out of the temple of their idol. With this small sum he hired idle and homeless men, came with them to the house of his late father, and slew his brothers upon one stone, all but one youngest brother, Jotham, who managed to hide. After this, all the inhabitants of the city gathered together in one place, and there, by the oak, made Abimelech king. At that very moment, on the nearby Mount Gerizim, Jotham suddenly appeared and cried out in a loud voice: «Listen to me, men of Shechem, that God may listen to you.» When silence fell, he continued: «Once the trees resolved to anoint a king over themselves. And they said to the olive tree: reign over us. — The olive tree answered: shall I give up my richness, which is used to honor gods and men, and go to sway over the trees? The trees said to the fig tree: come, reign over us. — The fig tree answered: shall I give up my sweetness and my good fruit, and go to sway over the trees? The trees said to the vine: come, reign over us. — And the vine answered: shall I give up my wine, which cheers gods and men, and go to sway over the trees? At last, all the trees said to the thornbush: come, reign over us. — And the thornbush said: if you truly anoint me king over you, then come, take refuge under my shade (and what shade has a thornbush?) — but if not, beware lest fire come out of the thornbush and consume even the cedars of Lebanon. — Consider, then, whether you have acted rightly in making Abimelech king, and whether you have rewarded Gideon and his house as you ought (today, among us, this is the house of the Romanovs)? For my father risked his life for you, and delivered you from your enemies, and you have killed his seventy sons, and made Abimelech, the son of a slave woman, king! Let fire, then, come out from Abimelech and consume you.» Having said this, Jotham fled and hid himself from his brother. And indeed Abimelech afterward burned, in the tower of the city, the inhabitants who had hidden themselves from his wrath for their disobedience; but Abimelech himself was killed by a woman who threw a piece of a millstone at him. Thus the curse of Jotham overtook both the men of Shechem for their impiety and Abimelech for his fratricide (Judg 9).

Sons of Russia, celebrating the royal anointing!

Will not the righteous punishment of God overtake our own traitors too, who have attempted the murder of our Tsar, anointed by God to the throne, whose ancestors, once anointed by God to the throne of Russia, exalted him and raised him to the rank of the foremost power in the world? — And what would become of us, Russians, without a Tsar? Our enemies would soon manage to destroy the very name of Russia—for the Bearer and Guardian of Russia, next after God, is the Sovereign of Russia, the Autocratic Tsar, 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 manifested in Russia in ages past, through the intercession and protection of the Mother of God and of the holy Russian wonderworkers, of whom the Russian Church and the Russian land are not wanting. Amen.