Moscow, 1917 A.D.
The clock on the Spasskaya tower of the Kremlin struck six.
Time to get up, for the morning prayers were to be said and the blessing for the daily chores to be asked.
"Yes, since the War started 3 years ago, the life of a sister of mercy is often trying to a former English schoolmistress", thought Sister Anastasia, inhabitant of the House of Stt.Martha and Mary, run by the Great Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna Romanova.
She reached the window and looked at the rising sun. Strangely, a vivid picture of another dawn, which brought a complete change to her life, came to her mind.
"Oh Lord", she sighed, "how could I pass through all of it and remain sane? Surely Your ways are not those of the world, neither are Your thoughts…How could Jonathan ever resign himself with the idea of his wife leaving everything behind and turning over a new leaf?"
Frankly speaking, even to herself she couldn't until now give a reasonable answer about her leaving England to Romania (and in 1914 to Russia) and adopting Orthodox Christianity.
Her Mother Superior at least was once married to a Russian Great Duke, and Russia had by this alliance become her motherland, like Israel became it to Ruth ages before.
When a revolutionary's bomb carried away the life of her husband in 1905, Mother Elisabeth didn't
give way to despair, but dedicated her life entirely to God and to the suffering people.
But what were the reasons for Wilhelmina Murray Harker?
Suddenly the words she knew quite well flashed through her mind:
"Most assuredly, I say to you, said the Lord, unless you eat the flesh of Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day….He who eats my flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from Heaven- not as your fathers ate manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever…."
"That's it!" exclaimed Sister Anastasia "For Our Lord's blood is the life!"
"Then Jesus said to the twelve, "Do you also want to go away?" But Simon Peter answered Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God…"
The morning now began. A bloody scarlet dawn was spreading over the Kremlin, the Moscow River and its surroundings.
Very soon the rivers of blood shall overflow the Russian Empire.
And once again, as ages ago, the blood of the martyrs shall become the seed of the Church…
For the blood is the life, and Anastasia is a Greek word for Resurrection…The end