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A reflection and prayer marking the death of Her Majesty the Queen with the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell.

Good morning.

Without her Christian faith, the life and long reign of her Majesty the Queen doesn’t really make much sense. From the moment she received the news of her Father’s death and knew she would be Queen, she understood this as a vocation.

Now you might think vocation is a slightly old fashioned word – describing people in caring professions doing wonderful, selfless things. Well what we do know is it’s a hard road.

For our late Queen, this was a call from God. That’s why the most sacred moment of her Coronation Service - the anointing by the Archbishop of Canterbury - was not beamed to the world in what was the first great television live event of the new age of mass communication.

But in the obtrusive glare of this age our Queen lived out this calling, strengthened and upheld by the belief that her life was blessed, anointed and empowered by God for a specific work, which was to serve and represent a nation and even a Commonwealth of nations across the world, a vocation. She was obedient to it, that obedience that she would have often prayed: your will be done; your kingdom come

Loving God, we know that there are many ways of representing and uniting nations, but we thank you for Her Majesty the Queen, for the ways she has carried out her duty with such care and we know that her care only makes sense because its origin and agency were found in you, our Saviour and our God.

Amen.