Sermon for the Second Week of Lent, on the Insolent and Brazen Murder of the Most Pious Sovereign Emperor Alexander Nikolaevich by Villains, March 1, 1881

I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. (Jn 10:11).

Beloved brothers and sisters! We no longer have our good, sovereign Shepherd of all Russia, the SOVEREIGN EMPEROR ALEXANDER NIKOLAEVICH. Villains, conspirators, spawn of hell, forerunners of the antichrist, have taken from us our bright sun: and now all Russia is wrapped in the darkness of grief and sorrow. All Russia weeps, prays, and weeps. We too have prayed and wept along with everyone else. But, brothers and sisters, everything must have its measure, and our grief too must have its measure, though our loss and all Russia’s is so great and so keenly felt, the calamity so shocking, the crime so brazen, that one would wish, and yet cannot, to set aside lament and sorrow, sighing and tears. How—one wonders—could such a terrible murder happen in broad daylight—the murder of a Tsar so good, so mighty, so renowned for his deeds and his love for Russia and her people! Why, O God—we said within ourselves—did You not deliver Him this time, as You had delivered Him so many times before, so that once more all Russia might sing You a hymn of thanksgiving and praise? Why did You allow the enemies of the Tsar and of Russia, who now raise their brow in triumph, to prevail? Why did You permit these evil hawks to fall upon our gentle Dove and tear Him apart so terribly? But forgive us, O God, our God, that we dare, in this way, as it were to contend with You and demand, as it were, an account of Your wise, gracious, and unsearchable judgments. It is the grief overwhelming our hearts that drives us to cry out and question in this way.

How, then, can we find comfort together in our inexpressible grief for our beloved Tsar and Father, now slain? Let us find comfort, first, in this: that the late SOVEREIGN, in his death, became an imitator of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself; for just as the Lord laid down His life for us, betrayed by Judas and killed at the hands of lawless men, nailed to the cross, so too our Tsar, betrayed and killed by his own subjects, laid down his life for us—for the greatest benefits he showed us in his wise reign, for his love toward us, and for his most sincere and generous desire for the good and well-being of all of us, even of his enemies and his murderers. He truly, like a good shepherd, laid down and did lay down his whole life for his sheep, among whom there were also foul-smelling goats—and in the very day and hour of his violent murder at the hands of the assassins, he wished to save from death a boy who had become the unfortunate victim of the attempt on his royal person. Had he, following the fatherly impulse of his heart, not stepped out of his carriage to attend to the wounded boy, but driven on instead, he might perhaps not have become a victim of death, and the enemies might have been caught.

Still, it seems his hour had come; for the destinies of nations lie under the special Providence of God, and the king’s heart is in the hand of God (Prov 21:1), as Scripture says. Let the Lord’s will be done!

Second, let us temper our grief with the reflection that the Lord cut short those days so dear to us not in the flower of his years, not in the fullness of his strength, but as his days were already declining toward evening, when he had already begun to feel some of the infirmities of approaching old age—for indeed all of us must surely die—he ended his days after a quarter-century of his beneficent reign. Third, let us find comfort in this: that the Lord was pleased to call him to Himself wearing the bright and beautiful crown of a Martyr—more radiant than his royal crown—and clothed in the incorruptible purple of a Passion-bearer, incomparably more precious and beautiful than his royal purple—a purple reddened with his own blood, mingled with the life-giving Blood of the Lord, of which he was accounted worthy to partake shortly before his death; let us find comfort—I will add—in this: that the Lord called him into His own incorruptible kingdom, unshaken forever, where there are no enemies, no enviers, no evildoers, and where holiest love reigns forever, righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Rom 14:17). Fourth, let us find comfort in this: that he left behind him a wise, good Heir, tested in the crucible of life’s experience, a man of mature years, who has already promised in his own sovereign word to follow in the footsteps of his Father, the Martyr-Tsar, and in whom we can behold the image of the one who has fallen asleep. Fifth, let us find comfort in this: that the all-good, all-seeing, watchful, all-wise, and almighty Providence will not permit such a misfortune to befall us again, for He does not allow us to be tempted beyond our strength, but together with the temptation grants a surplus of strength, so that we may bear it (1Cor 10:13).

But even amid our Christian consolation over the sudden and terrible death of the SOVEREIGN, let us not forget that such an end for him is, for all of us, a thunderous, accusing voice of our Heavenly Father, testifying that by the state of our morals we have become unworthy of such a Sovereign, and that the Lord has therefore taken him from us to Himself, that he might rest from his labors and escape new plots of malice, and that if this is done to the green tree, what will become of the dry (Lk 23:31)—that is, of us sinners, who bear no fruits of repentance? We must amend our lives, if we wish our Tsars to reign long and in prosperity. Among the Jews there once lived, just before the Babylonian captivity, a most devout king, Josiah, who showed a burning zeal for the true faith and destroyed idolatry in the land of Judah. But the Jews of that time were utterly corrupted, and so they were deprived of their devout king, who was killed in battle at thirty-nine years of age. Let us examine ourselves closely, and see what in us is not good, is displeasing and hateful to God. Oh, how much that is not good, not pleasing to God, there is in us! Here, for example, it is now Lent, and yet many have forgotten that this is a season of fasting. Public entertainments and theaters went on even during Lent, and every other sinful, unclean pleasure that further inflames the passions of our sensual flesh went on then too, and still goes on now—I mean certain well-known houses—and they keep many, many people from giving the least thought to the salvation of their souls, though the fasts were established for exactly that purpose. And is this truly how it must always be? Is the salvation of human souls not precious to God? Did He not purchase them at the price of His own most pure Blood? Will He hand them back over to the power of the devil? And yet people give themselves over to the power of Satan through their own sins and impenitence, and if they perish, the fault will be their own, for they will have destroyed the salvation that stood ready for them. And so, for the terribly spreading plague of sin among us, terrible blows are permitted to fall on us, thunderbolts striking from heaven: now a failed harvest, and from it the extreme dearness of the necessities of life; now epidemics; now floods and storms; now devastating fires; and to crown it all, here now is yet another blow upon us! Now everyone has come to their senses, has awakened, has been shaken! Everyone weeps; everyone cries out: ah, what villainy! what barbarism, what viciousness! But is that all that is required of us? What is needed is moral cleansing, a whole nation’s deep repentance, a change from pagan habits to Christian ones. Let us wash ourselves in the tears of repentance, let us be cleansed, let us be reconciled with God, and He will be reconciled with us, and He will scatter and destroy all the enemies of the Tsar and the people like chaff. Behold, the Keeper of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps (Ps 120:4)! Let us care for one another—the rich for the poor; the strong and the eminent for the lowly, the simple, and the weak; let us wipe away the tears of widows and orphans, groaning in their hopeless poverty and often cursing their lot, driven to despair—and there are not a few of them, and their cries reach God. Let us cast off luxury, which is the enemy and the scourge of mercy, and to which we so readily grow accustomed. Let us gladly share with those in want, in need of a piece of bread, of clothing, of shelter. Forgive me for so often reminding you of this: it is my duty to awaken in everyone a feeling of mercy; for only the merciful will be shown mercy. We are all members of one another in Christ, and in the body, if one member suffers, all suffer with it (Mt 5:7; 1Cor 12:26). The late SOVEREIGN cared for all of us as the good Shepherd of the whole Russian land, and laid down his life for us. Let us care for one another; let no one hold back from mercy, if you wish to belong to Christ and rightly be called a Christian—for if you show no mercy, you yourself will receive no mercy from God. With the measure you use, it is said, it will be measured back to you (Lk 6:38). Amen.