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By Root 2168 0

your houses with flags, line up along both sides of the road to greet … and so on.” Huts were immediately painted, covered with boards and even iron. The strictest security measures were taken. Even the welcome had been carefully conceived. During the formal ceremony at the station, a loaded revolver “accidentally” fell out of Minister Plehve’s coat, which his servant was carrying, and a shot rang out. The scheming Plehve had played it exactly right. The sound of the shot was supposed to evoke terrible memories, so that the tsar would properly appreciate the precautionary measures undertaken by the concerned minister.

The police games went right past the imperial couple, though. They saw only the ecstatic crowds lining the road and the sea of people—150,000—who had gathered at the monastery. These people were not driven away. The people who had come to worship Serafim were inclined to be especially devoted to Nicholas. He saw the enthusiasm of the immense crowd that greeted him.

——

The Sarov trip made an enormous impression on Nicholas and Alexandra.

They spent three days in prayer on the Sarov grounds.

At night the empress bathed in the holy pond, imploring Serafim for the birth of a son, while Nicholas sat on the bank. Her body was white in the silver water.

A sense of quiet well-being at the saint’s grave and these peaceful days in Sarov.

At Sarov Alix grasped the astounding concept of the “holy man.” A holy man is your intercessor before God. You entrust your will to him, your cunning reason, and he, sensing the continuous link with Him, guides you. The holy man is your guide; he delivers the bread of the angels to your soul. Serafim the holy man was at their side; they could sense his presence and hear his quiet voice speaking to them in his teachings: “Man corporeal is akin to a lighted candle: it must burn and he must die. But his soul is immortal, and our concern must be the soul, not the body.”

Venerable Serafim was proclaimed the protector of the tsar’s family.

They say when Serafim was dying he asked that his body be tossed out like carrion—for the wild animals to eat, so meek and humble was he.

In 1920 his relics were unearthed and confiscated. Thus after death, he, along with the entire Russian church, “accepted insult and humiliation.” The trail of his relics was hopelessly lost—they were believed to have been destroyed. Yet seventy years later, they were discovered in the cellar of the Museum of Atheism, which is housed in Kazan Cathedral, a once renowned Russian Orthodox church.

One museum worker noticed a large rectangular object encased in canvas standing in a corner heaped with tapestries. When they opened the canvas, under it they saw a wooden box, where under the gauze and cotton wool the astonished workers of the Museum of Atheism laid their eyes on unrotted relics. It was the complete frame of a man: the beard and hair were preserved, as were bits of muscle. On the skull was a monk’s cowl, on his chest a bronze cross, on his crossed arms satin gauntlets embroidered in gold: “Holy Father Serafim, pray God for us.”

Seventy years after his death Serafim was canonized.

Seventy years after his outrage, his relics were returned. And all this he had prophesied.

Prophecies.… In Sarov Nicholas learned several of the saint’s amazing prophecies. Witte recounted them in his Memoirs. When Witte was leaving to conclude the peace treaty with Japan in Portsmouth, an infuriating message was sent after him: he should not worry but know that Saint Serafim had prophesied that the peace treaty would be concluded.

The Department of Police, too, presented the tsar with Serafim’s prophecies.

Among them was one that stunned Nicholas. Here is what the amazing elder prophesied about Nicholas’s rule: “At the beginning of this monarch’s reign there will be national disasters, there will be an unsuccessful war, and great confusion will ensue within the government. Father will rise up against son and brother against brother. But the second half of his reign will be bright, and the sovereign’s life long.”

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