Here on Earth we are just wanderers. This world is just a place of our lamentable exile. Our days are vain. The time comes for everyone to go home, to go to the heavenly Fatherland. Saints wait for death as if it were the greatest of all delights. The end of earthly life for them is the meeting with the Creator who their souls longed for. A person who devoted his life to God believes in the Lord’s dispensation about him. Trusting this dispensation he is ready for every pain and sorrow.

The Grand Princess met the political disturbances that had begun in Russia with courage and calmness. She was helping people, as usual. She visited the wounded, participated in organizing help for the army. She did not feel even a shade of anger.

Loving Russian people with all her heart, she decided to share their sufferings. She decided not to leave Russia. She predicted that Orthodox Chruch will sustain in its struggle with the evil. She believed that our Patroness, Holy Theotokos, will plea Her Divine Son, and Church will sustain and overcome all the obstacles.

God’s mind cannot be understood. Trials begin when a person is strong enough and is able to go where he has to suffer. The Lord puts a person on the cross he is able to cope with. God guides him to the verge of eternity. He leads him to holiness and immortality through strait gate and narrow way.

Princess Elisabeth was arrested and had to leave Moscow in April 1918, on the third day of Easter. His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon said Liturgy in St. Martha and Mary Convent – that was blessing of Grand Princess Elisabeth before her way to cross.

“God bless you, and may Christ’s Resurrection comfort and strengthen all of you… Unite for the sake of the Lord, and say like John Chrysostom: May glory be to God for everything!”. That was how the prioress taught her sisters on her way to exile.

There was the end of her way. “My son, give Me your heart…”

This happened in the depth of a July night. Grand Princess together with one of her nuns Varvara and other prisoners was thrown into a mine. Cherubims’ song was heard to be sung by the prisoners deep in the mine. Choirs of Angels who live in the heavens where nothing can leave a person without eternal joy sung it together with the prisoners.

Once during her pilgrimage to the Holy Land, having visited a church dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene at the foot of Mount of Olives, Grand Princess said: How much I want to be buried here.

The holy relic of the St. Martha and Mary Convent prioress and her faithful nun Varvara were shipped to Jerusalem and laid in the ossuary of the St. Mary Magdalene Church. When the grave with the body of Grand Princess Elisabeth was opened, the room filled with fragrance. According to Archimandrite Anthony, it was a smell of honey and jasmine.