Tsar-Martyr
Nicholas II
July
17 (July 4 old calendar)
The battle against Tsar Nicholas
II was clearly bound up with the battle against God and faith . . . He
became a Martyr, having remained faithful to the Ruler of those who
rule, and accepted death in the same way as the martyrs accepted it. Archbishop
John Maximovitch.
Very soon after Russia accepted
the seed of the Gospel (in the year 988) her soil was sanctified by the
blood of martyrs. The pure young sons of Grand Duke Vladimir, Boris and
Gleb, accepted death at the hands of a political assassin in order to
save their people from civil war and terrible upheaval. They became
sufferers for righteousness (I Peter 3:14); being conformed to the
innocent suffering of Christ, they became true "Passion-Bearers.
As in the beginning of Holy Russia, so
at the end: it pleased God to reveal Himself to the Russian people
through the innocent suffering of Saints Boris and Gleb; now, in these
latter times, He has again unveiled Himself through the purifying
suffering of a Tsar, the Anointed of God and supreme Protector of
Christ's Church in Russia, Nicholas II.
Western writers do not understand
Orthodox monarchy. And because America rebelled against the King of
England; Americans in particular have no sympathy for the idea of
Monarchy. Indeed, it is almost a sacred tradition to applaud any nation
that "comes to its senses" and overthrows its king! The Tsars
of Russia are viewed in this same man- centered rather than God-centered
light.
But; in Orthodox Russia there once
existed a society composed not of "church and state" (such as
existed in medieval Europe) but of "government and
priesthood"-a holy commonwealth. The Tsar was never placed outside
the Church or "above the law," but always within the
Church and subject to the law of Christ. He was very much the
"servant of the Gospel": he was required to live by it and
rule by it in order to be worthy of the blessings of God upon himself,
his family, and his nation. Such a righteous Father to his people was
the last Tsar, Nicholas II. And now, in this year of grace, 1981, in
spite of more than 60 years of Marxist deception, it pleases God to
reveal Nicholas and those that suffered with him, to the Church and to
the whole world (if only the world will hear it!).
Blessed Archbishop John Maximovitch
has written: "Why was Tsar Nicholas II persecuted, slandered and
killed? Because he was Tsar, Tsar by the Grace of God. He was the bearer
and incarnation of the Orthodox world view that the Tsar is the servant
of God, the Anointed of God, and that to Him he must give an account for
the people entrusted to him by destiny..."
In Orthodox teaching, Tsar Nicholas
was the last representative of lawful Christian authority in the world,
the last one to restrain the mystery of iniquity (2 Thess. 2:27).
(And, indeed, from the time of his martyrdom can be dated the
unprecedented lawlessness, godlessness, and apostasy of this final age:
the complete unleashing of the forces of darkness, which now threaten to
complete ly engulf the world as a preparation for the reign of
Antichrist.).
An Orthodox monarch receives his
authority from God, but by what means and in what manner does it come to
him? Authority to govern in the Name of God and perform the highest
earthly ministry descends upon a Tsar in the Sacrament of Anointing, at
the time of his coronation. After the crowning he is told that
"this visible and material adornment of thy head is to thee a
manifest sign that the King of Glory, Christ, invisibly crowneth
thee." The Anointing takes place after the reading of the Gospel in
Divine Liturgy. The chief hierarch anoints the Tsar with Holy Chrism on
the brow, eyes, nostrils, lips, ears, breast, and hands, saying each
time: "The Seal of the Gift of the Holy Spirit."
Thus, Nicholas II received his
authority through a Sacrament. The Holy Spirit was upon him! "By
rejecting the Tsar, the people blasphemed the Sacrament and trampled
upon the grace of God" (Illustratted History of the Russian
Peop1e).
In
1917 Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow saw in a vision the Saviour
speaking to Tsar Nicholas: "You see," said the Lord, "two
cups in my hands: one is bitter for your people, and the other is sweet
for you." In the vision the Tsar begged for the bitter cup. The
Saviour then took a large glowing coal from the cup and put it in the
Tsar's hands. The Tsar's whole body then began to grow light, until he
was shining like a radiant spirit. Then the vision changed to a field of
flowers, in the middle of which Nicholas was distributing manna to a
multitude of people. A voice spoke: "The Tsar has taken the guilt
of the Russian people upon himself and the Russian people is
forgiven." Nicholas him self once said: "Perhaps an expiatory
sacrifice is needed for Russia's salvation. I will be that sacrifice.
May God's will be done!
He had a very strong sense of his
destiny as an Orthodox ruler. Although he had an opportunity to flee the
country with his family and seek refuge outside Russia, he and his
Empress deliberately chose to stay and accept whatever awaited them. He
had been born on the feast of the Prophet Job and because of this he
often remarked to his advisors: "I have a secret conviction that I
am destined for a terrible trial, that I shall not receive my reward on
this earth." No wonder that our Russian Bishops Abroad wrote (in
1968): "Job the Much-Suffering, on the day of whose commemoration
the Tsar was born, said in his grievous suffering, concerning the day of
his conception: 'As for that night, let darkness seize upon it; let it
not be joined unto the days of the year" (Job 3:6). Terrible was
the night of the murder of the Tsar"!
On that unspeakable night, "the
prisoners were all in a deep sleep when they were awakened and ordered
to dress in order to leave the city... The Imperial Family descended to
the basement where the Sovereign sat down, with his ill son, on a chair
in the middle of the room. The Duchesses, the doctor, and three
dedicated servants were seated around him. Every one was waiting for the
signal to depart. At the executioner's announcement (which stunned all
the prisoners) of the impending execution, the Empress succeeded in
crossing herself. She was killed instantly, together with the Sovereign.
God spared them from hearing the groans of the Tsarevitch and the cries
of the wounded Grand Duchess Anastasia. The first bullets did not bring
death to the youngest ones and they were savagely killed with blows of
bayonets and gun-butts and with shots at point-blank range. The imost innocent
and ho1y had suffered the greatest torture"? (Illustrated
Russian History).
In the words of Fr. Dimitry Dudko, one
of the first of that wave of modern confessors to speak out against the
betrayal of the Church in Russia: "The Tsar is a saint and,
moreover, one of the greatest saints. O great saint of Russia,
Great-Martyr Nicholas, pray to God for us!"
Reproduced
from the website of
www.fatheralexander.org
