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Good morning. The Royal British Legion’s Festival of Remembrance, broadcast tonight on Radio 2 and Â鶹ԼÅÄ One, will formally begin the nation’s weekend of commemorating the Fallen. Among its most moving moments is during the Silence when countless poppies flutter down onto the muster standing motionless below – among them service men and women of today and bereaved families who’ve lost loved ones in conflict, some recently, others tonight from Northern Ireland (where, in Enniskillen today, the tragic deaths at their Remembrance Parade 27 years ago will be recalled).

Within the last hundred years the red poppy has become our greatest symbol of remembrance. The intensely simple flower, growing among the battlefields in the First World War, seemed a fitting emblem of that tragic carnage.

But the poppy is about more than remembrance. Tonight’s festival will show examples of the legion’s huge amount of welfare work supporting the wounded and bereaved and other veterans – helping them to rebuild their lives - to live on. The funding for that comes chiefly from selling poppies. So each poppy worn is also an important and practical sign of hope.

This year at the festival, surrounding the part when the poppies fall, a young German will join a British youth as each prays in their own language for reconciliation between the nations of our troubled world; and young British-born citizens of different ethnic backgrounds and faiths will, as a tribute to their many forebears from the Commonwealth who fought and died, express commitment, on behalf of this generation, to stand up for shared religious values that counter evil.

Lord, may our poppies this weekend honour the Fallen, give hope to the suffering and encourage reconciliation and peace.  Amen.