clairmonk

THE CLAIRVOYANT MONK

A soft light was diffused throughout the hall. In the rays of the setting sun, it seemed that the biblical motifs upon the Gobelin tapestries embroidered with gold and silver were springing to life. The the lines on the splendid Guarengi parquet floor gleamed in their elegance. Quietude and solemnity reigned all about.

The fixed gaze of Emperor Paul Petrovich was met by the meek eyes of Monk Avel, who stood before him. Reflected in them, as though in a mirror, were love, peace and joy.

The Emperor developed an immediate liking for this mysterious monk, veiled in humility, fasting and prayer. Word of his clairvoyance was already long-since widespread. Both simple folk and renowned grandees would go to his kellia at the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, and none would depart without consolation and prophetic advice. Also known to Emperor Paul Petrovich was the fact that Avel had correctly foretold the day of the repose of his Most-August Mother, the Sovereign-Lady Empress Catherine Alexeyevna, now reposed in God. And of yesterday, when talk touched upon Avel the Seer, and His Majesty had deigned to command resolutely that on the morrow he be brought to the Gatchina Palace, in which the Court was present.

Smiling tenderly, Emperor Paul Petrovich turned kindly toward Avel the monk with a question about how long ago he had been shorn and in what monasteries he had been.

“Honourable father!” the Emperor exclaimed. “They say concerning thee, and I myself can see it, that the grace of God abides upon thee in visible form. What shalt thou say concerning my reign and my destiny? What dost thou see with thine clairvoyant eyes concerning my Lineage in the obscurity of the ages and about the Russian Realm? Name off my successors on the Russian Throne; foretell their fate, as well.”

“Ho, Batiushka-Tsar!” Avel shook his head. “Why dost thou force me to foretell sadness for thineself? Brief will be thy reign, and I, a sinner, see thy vicious end. Upon the Feastday of Sofrony of Jerusalem shalt thou be martyred by thy faithless servants; in thy bedchamber shalt thou be suffocated by the evil-doers, whom thou dost warm upon thy royal breast. On Passion Saturday shall they bury thee… They, these evil-doers, attempting to justify their great sin of regicide, will proclaim thee to have been mad, they will defame thy goodly memory… But the Russian nation will understand and value thee with its righteous soul and will bear its sorrows to thy tomb, beseeching thine intercession and the softening of unrighteous and cruel hearts. The number of thine years is likened to the count of the letters of the utterance upon the pediment of thy palace, in which truly is also to be found the covenant concerning thy Royal House: “It behooveth this house to be like unto the stronghold of the Lord for length of days”…

“Concerning that, thou art right,” Emperor Paul Petrovich exclaimed. “I received this motto in an unique revelation, along with the command to erect a Cathedral dedicated to the Holy Archistrategos Michael, where the Mikhailovskii palace is currently built. And I dedicated both the palace and the church to the leader of the heavenly Host”…

I see in it thy premature tomb, O Right-believing Gosudar [Sovereign]. And it shall not be the residence of thy descendants, as thou thinkest. Concerning the fate of the Russian Realm, three fierce yokes were revealed to me in prayer: that of the Tatars, that of the Poles -- and one yet to come, that of the Jews”.

[NOTE: Folk poetry did not exclude the actions of these forces even during the period of the Time of Troubles at the beginning of the XVII-th century. Addressing the men Nizhnii Novgorod, Kuz’ma Minin had said:

“Let us liberate Mother Moscow from the iniquitous Jews,
From the iniquitous Jews and the evil Poles!” ]

“What? Holy Rus’ under a Jewish yoke? May it never be so!” Paul Petrovich frowned angrily. “Thou art expounding nonsense, O black-robed monk”…

“But where are the Tatars, Your Imperial Majesty? Where are the Poles? And the same will befall the Jewish yoke. Do not grieve thineself over it, Batiushka-Tsar: the Christ-killers will get theirs”…

“What awaits my successor, Tsesarevich Alexander?”

“During his reign the Frenchman will burn Moscow, and he will take Paris away from him and will be called Blessed. But the royal crown will seem heavy for him, and for the podvig of royal service, he will substitute the podvig of fasting and prayer, and he will be accounted righteous in the sight of God”…

“And who will succeed Emperor Alexander?”

“Thy son, Nicholas”…

“What? Alexander shall have no son. Then, Tsesarevich Constantine”…

“Constantine shall not desire to reign, recalling thy fate… The beginning of the reign of thy son Nicholas will start with a Voltairian rebellion, and this will be an evil seed, a pernicious seed for Russia, were it not for God’s grace overshadowing Russia. A hundred years after that the Domicile of the Most-holy Bogoroditsa will become destitute; the Russian Realm will become the abomination of desolation”.

“Who will sit upon the Throne of Russia after my son Nicholas?”

“Thy grandson, Alexander the Second, foreseen to be called the ‘Tsar-Liberator’. He will fulfill thine intention – freeing the peasants, and later he shall vanquish the Turks, and also give the Slavs freedom from the infidel yoke. The Jews will not forgive him his great acts and will begin to hunt him down. They will murder him on a clear day, in the capital city, faithfully subject to him, by the hands of renegades. Like unto thineself, he has seal the podvig of his service with his royal blood”…

“Is it then that the Jewish yoke that thou hast foretold shall begin?”

“Not yet. The Tsar-Liberator shall be succeeded by the Tsar-Peacemaker, his son, and Thy grandson, Alexander the Third. Glorious will his reign be. He will subdue accursed sedition, and establish peace and order”.

“To whom shall he pass on the royal heritage?”

“To Nicholas the Second – the Holy Tsar, like unto Job the Much-suffering. He will exchange the royal diadem for a crown of thorns; he shall be betrayed by his own people, much as the Son of God once was. There shall be a war, a great war, a world war… Men will fly in the air like birds; they will swim beneath the waters like fish; they will begin to annihilate one another with foetid-smelling brimstone. Treachery will increase and multiply. On the eve of victory, the Royal Throne will fall and tears shall quench the thirst of the damp earth. A muzhik with an axe will seize power in his madness and a truly Egyptian plague will set in”… Avel the Seer began to sob bitterly and through his tears he quietly continued:

“Later, the Jew shall flay the Russian Land with a scorpion, looting its Hallows, shutting down the Churches of God, executing the best people of Russia. This is by God’s allowance, it is the wrath of the Lord for Russia’s rejection of the Holy Tsar. The Scriptures testify concerning Him. The Nineteenth, Twentieth and Ninetieth Psalms have revealed his entire destiny to me.

“‘Now have I come to know that the Lord hath saved His Christ; He shall hear Him from His Holy Heaven, strong is the right hand of His salvation’.

“‘Great is His glory through Thy salvation, splendour and majesty dost Thou place upon him’.

“‘I shall be with him in tribulation; I shall rescue him and glorify him; length of days shall I grant him; and I shall show him My salvation’. (Ps. 19, 7; 20, 6; 90, 15-16)

“Abiding in the support of the Almighty, He shall be seated upon the Throne of Glory. And His royal brother is he concerning whom it was revealed to the Prophet Daniel: ‘And there shall arise in that day Michael, the great prince, who standeth for the sons of thy people’… (Dan. 12, 1)

“Russia’s hopes will be realized. The Orthodox Cross will gleam upon [the Cathedral of Ste.] Sophia, in Tsargrad [Constantinople]; Holy Rus’ shall be filled with the smoke of incense and with prayer, and shall blossom like unto an heavenly lily”…

Emperor Paul Petrovich became lost in profound thought. Avel stood motionless. Silent, invisible bonds passed between the Monarch and the Monk. Emperor Paul Petrovich lifted up his head, and in his eyes, fixed upon the distance, as though through a veil of what was to come, profound royal emotions were reflected.

“Thou sayest that the Jewish yoke shall overhang my Russia in about a hundred years. My grandfather, Peter the Great, told me the same thing about my fate as didst thou. And I consider it to be a good thing to forewarn my descendant, Nicholas the Second, of all that thou hast foretold to me concerning him, in order that the Book of Judgments might be opened up to him. That my great-grandson might be made knowledgeable with regards to his way of the cross and the glory of his passion and long-suffering…

“Record, O venerable father, all that thou hast spoken; put it all down in writing, and I shall place thy prophecy in a special box and affix my seal thereunto; and thy writing shall be preserved involate here, in the cabinet of my Gatchina palace. Go, Avel, and pray unceasingly in thy kellia -- for me, for my Descenants, and for the good estate of our Realm”.

And, having placed Avel’s writing in an envelope, he deigned to inscribe upon it the following:

“To be opened by Our Descendant on the centennial date of My demise”.

On 11 March 1901, on the centennial anniversary of the martyric end of his regnant great-grandfather, Emperor Paul Petrovich of Blessed Memory, following a Liturgy for the repose of his soul in the Peter-Paul Cathedral by his sepulchre, Sovereign Emperor Nicholas Alexandrovich, accompanied by the Minister of the Imperial Court, Adjutant-General Baron Frederichs (soon endowed with the title of Count) and other personages of the [Royal] Suite, deigned to arrive at the Gatchina Palace in order to carry out the will of his forebear, reposed in God.

The panikhida was extremely touching. The Peter-Paul Cathedral was filled with worshippers. It was not only the embroidery of the uniforms that glittered there; it was not only dignitaries who were present there. There was a plenitude of crude linen peasant shirts and simple kerchiefs present, and the sepulchre of Emperor Paul Petrovich was buried in candles and live flowers. These candles, these flowers were from those believing in the miraculous help and intercession of the reposed Tsar for his descendants and for the entire Russian nation. People could see for themselves the fulfillment of Avel the Seer’s prophecy, that the nation would uniquely honour the memory of the Tsar-Martyr and will flow to His Sepulchre, imploring his intercession and asking for the softening of the hearts of

The Sovereign Emperor opened the box and several times re-read the account of Avel the Seer concerning his fate and that of Russia. He already knew his own thorn-filled faith; knew that it was not for naught that he had been born on the feastday of Job the Much-suffering. He knew how much he would be forced to bear upon his royal shoulders; knew of the approaching bloody wars, troubles and great upheavals of the Russian State. His heart sensed also that accursed black year when he would be deceived, betrayed and abandoned by all…