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ÌýSunday Worship

Portsmouth Cathedral

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Leader: The Revd Canon Dr Jo Spreadbury, Canon Precentor

Preacher: The Very Revd Dr Anthony Cane, Dean Act of Remembrance & Blessing: The Venerable Andrew Hillier, Chaplain to the Fleet.

Organist and Master of the Choristers: Dr David Price

Sub-Organist: Sachin Gunga

Producer: Philip Billson

Production Coordinator: Helen Surtees

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RADIO 4 OPENING ANNOUNCEMENT:

Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4. It’s ten past eight and time for Sunday Worship which comes live from Portsmouth Cathedral anticipating the 80th anniversary of D-Day this Thursday.

The service opens as the choir and congregation, accompanied by the Royal Marines Band sing a hymn used at services for the troops before they boarded the D Day flotilla: Ìý‘Lord of our life, and God of our salvation’.Ìý

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ÌýCHOIR/ORGAN/ALL: HYMN: Lord of our life, and God of our salvation (Iste Confessor)

 

PRECENTOR:

Welcome to Portsmouth Cathedral, known as the Cathedral of the Sea. I’m the Canon Precentor the Revd Dr Jo Spreadbury. Eighty years ago that hymn – ‘Lord of our life’ - was sung at many of the services which took place here and around the Portsmouth coast for the soldiers, sailors and air crews about to embark for D-Day. It was a day that would change the world.

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Plans had been laid for a massive invasion to liberate Western Europe and tens of thousands had responded to the call to serve the cause of freedom. From the distinctive tower and lantern of Portsmouth Cathedral, where we are gathered this morning, an observer would have seen ships and landing craft filling the Solent as Allied troops from around the world prepared to cross the channel for the beaches of Normandy.Ìý

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We are now eighty years on from those events - they are part of history. So today we give thanks for those who fought and died. And we ask God's help to bring peace in our world where nations are still divided and peoples are oppressed. Later The Chaplain of the Fleet The Venerable Andrew Hillier will lead us in an act of remembrance.

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So we pray:

Lord God of the nations,

whose sovereign rule brings justice and peace, have mercy on our broken and divided world.

Pour out your Spirit of peace into the hearts of all, that all races and peoples may learn to live as members of one family in obedience to your law, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

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PRECENTOR:

The Cathedral choir sings a Psalm now. Psalm 46 talks about trusting in God even in the most challenging times. It uses a refrain: ‘the Lord of hosts is with us’. The ‘Lord of hosts’ was one of the favourite phrases for God used in prayer by Field Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein who commanded the Allies’ land forces on D-Day.

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CHOIR/ORGAN/: PSALM: Psalm 46

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PRECENTOR:

Those who travel to the Normandy beaches to pay their respects around the anniversary of D-Day have been able since 2021 to visit a new memorial, the British Normandy Memorial - close to the village of Ver-sur-Mer, at the eastern end of Gold Beach - which records the names of more than 22,000 servicemen and women under British command who fell on D-Day and during the Battle of Normandy in the summer of 1944.

‘The nearby Winston Churchill Centre for Education and Learning’ is set to be opened by the King this Thursday, the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

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NICHOLAS WITCHELL recorded comments

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PRECENTOR:

One of the signals for the imminent start of the D-Day invasion, commemorated by the British Normandy Memorial, was a coded message broadcast to the resistance using words written by the French poet Verlaine. The first lines signalled that D-Day was within a fortnight, while the next lines were transmitted on 5th June to say that D-Day was about to begin.

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That Verlaine poem has been set by the composer George Arthur as a new commission for D-Day 80, Chanson de Normandie, and is sung now for the first time by the Portsmouth Cathedral Choir.

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CHOIR: Anthem: Chanson de Normandie (George Arthur)

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PRECENTOR:

General Lord Dannatt is Chairman of Trustees of the Normandy Memorial trust. Formerly Chief of the General Staff, Lord Dannatt reflects now on the spiritual significance of the British Normandy Memorial for today’s armed forces.

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LORD DANNATT comments.

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PRECENTOR:

Now we listen to Jesus’s words from the Sermon on the Mount, as described in the Gospel according to St Matthew. They are read by Bella Stuart-Smith, granddaughter of Field Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein.

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BELLA: Words from St Matthew's Gospel (The Sermon on the Mount)

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PRECENTOR:

Cue into third clip – the power of Jesus’ words in the Beatitudes to shape hearts and lives… the work of the Winston Church Education centre to shape awareness and commitment for young people of the future.

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NICHOLAS WITCHELL further comments.

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PRECENTOR:

In a moment our Dean here at Portsmouth, Dr Anthony Cane, will reflect on how D-Day was a day that changed the world, and how there may be opportunities for each to us to act to change the world today. But first the Choir sings the black American composer Undine Smith Moore’s ‘We shall walk through the valley’

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CHOIR: ‘We shall walk through the valley’ (Moore)

 

DEAN: Sermon

Five years ago it briefly felt as though Portsmouth was the centre of the world.ÌýÌý Our late Queen arrived by helicopter only a short distance from the Deanery, and joined a whole host of world leaders on Southsea Common to mark the seventy fifth anniversary of D-Day.ÌýÌý I was lucky enough to be there, sitting next to an elderly gentleman who told me that on the 6th of June 1944 he had been seventeen, serving on a naval destroyer backing up those landing on the Normandy beaches.Ìý When I met him, he was ninety two; if he is still with us he will be ninety seven.

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At that D-Day 75 commemoration, a Portsmouth born veteran, John Jenkins, brought those world leaders to their feet.Ìý As a sergeant in the Royal Pioneer Corps, he had landed on Gold Beach.Ìý ‘I was terrified’, he said, ‘I think everyone was. You don’t show it, but it’s there.Ìý I was a small part in a very big machine. You never forget your comrades because we were all in it together.Ìý It’s right that the courage and sacrifice of so many is being honoured. We must never forget.’

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John Jenkins was ninety nine when he spoke those words, and died later that year.ÌýÌý His words remain as true and as powerful as ever.ÌýÌý He was but a small part in a vast enterprise, but the success of the whole thing depended on everyone playing their part: all one hundred and fifty six thousand troops landed by sea and air; all those involved in sailing six thousand nine hundred and thirty nine ships of various kinds.Ìý

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Outside the D-Day museum in Portsmouth you can see the only surviving landing craft specifically designed to get tanks and their crews on to the Normandy beaches.ÌýÌý LCT704 was just one of over eight hundred.Ìý Captained by a twenty year old solicitor, it was unwieldy to sail as it had no keel, needing to get as close in to the shore as possible.Ìý The soldiers on board were sea sick and cold.Ìý And yet they valiantly played their part in the audacious and risky endeavour of Operation Overlord, ensuring their contemporaries, and generations to come, could grow up in a Europe free of tyranny and oppression.Ìý Now that we know what happened next, with Paris liberated less than three months later, and Germany surrendering in May 1945, it is easy to forget that success was far from guaranteed.Ìý What was achieved was difficult, testing and uncertain, not least because the right weather conditions were so crucial.

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The British Normandy Memorial has a new ‘Standing with Giants’ installation.ÌýÌý As John Jenkins said, it is right to honour courage and sacrifice, and as the number of surviving veterans inevitably continues to diminish, never to forget.Ìý But Jenkins’ honesty about the fear he felt is a vital part of that remembrance.Ìý For this ‘day that changed the world’ was made possible by thousands of ordinary human beings, from many different nations, who were terrified and seasick.Ìý ÌýTheir commanders were both brilliant, and difficult.Ìý General Eisenhower, supreme commander, told Air Marshal Arthur Tedder, ‘I am tired with dealing with a lot of prima donnas… tell that bunch that if they can’t get together and stop quarrelling like children, I will tell the Prime Minister to get someone else to run this damn war.’Ìý

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The language of ‘standing with giants’ should not be taken to mean that victory was achieved by people in some way fundamentally different from those living today.Ìý Human nature, with its mixture of gifts and frailties, is a constant; although perhaps the D-Day generation were more ready than our own to acknowledge their need of God in meeting the extraordinary challenges of their times.Ìý Their lesson to us, is that by the grace of God, frail human beings can achieve incredible things: through co-ordinated effort and moral purpose, through the courage and self-sacrifice of which we are still capable.Ìý Our fears need not overwhelm us.

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For Jesus, as we heard in our reading from the beatitudes, those who hungered for righteousness, and worked for peace, were blessed because they were helping to create a new and better world.ÌýÌý In them, God is at work.ÌýÌý So it was for all those on the Normandy beaches.Ìý So it is for those who struggle for peace and righteousness in the world today, as we are all called to do.

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The D-Day veterans who commissioned a memorial window in Portsmouth Cathedral chose a famous prayer of Sir Francis Drake to express the determination of spirit that sustained them:Ìý ‘O Lord God, when thou givest to thy servants to endeavour any great matter, grant us also to know that it is not the beginning, but the continuing of the same until it be thoroughly finished, which yieldeth the true glory.’Ìý AMEN

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PRECENTOR:

ÌýPRAYER:

Lord God, we pray for peace in our day.

As you bound the forces of oppression and evil which threatened us in the Second World War, so we pray for your Spirit to bring love instead of hatred and pardon instead of injury in our world today.

We thank you for the freedoms we enjoy as a result of D-Day, and pray for the countries of Europe and for our own nation.

Help us to do our part to ensure the flourishing of mutual respect and understanding and to bring people closer in community and companionship.

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PRAYER:

O Lord and Master,

we ask you to comfort and heal all who bear the scars of war.

We pray for those in darkness, that you will bring light; for those who despair, that they might know the transformation of their hopes and futures.

Help us to be faithful in prayer and action, in service and selflessness, that we may console others and ourselves know the consolation of your love.

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PRAYER:

O Divine Master,

we ask your pardon for all that we have done to contribute to conflict or misunderstanding through our words or actions; the ways we have not gone to the defence of others, the ways we have not stood up against evil.

ÌýHelp us to give of ourselves in the cause of peace

and by your resurrection power, may we bring new life and hope

to all we love, all we work with, all whose lives are bound to ours:

looking forward to the day you will bring us together in your perfect peace and in the fullness of eternal life.

We ask this for your kingdom and your glory’s sake.

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ALL:ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Amen.

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We pray the Lord’s Prayer together.

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ALL:

Our Father,

who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name;

thy kingdom come;

thy will be done;

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation;

but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom,

the power and the glory,

for ever and ever.Ìý

Amen.

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PRECENTOR:

The Chaplain of the Fleet, The Venerable Andrew Hillier now leads us in an Act of Remembrance.

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The Venerable Andrew Hillier:

Let us remember before God all who took part in the Normandy landings; those who gave their lives as comrades in the British Army, the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force and from other countries: whom we remember with pride.

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And we pray that, loyal to their example and their sense of duty, we may, like them, respond to the call of justice, freedom and peace.

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CHOIR: For the Fallen (Guest)

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The Venerable Andrew Hillier:

Let us pledge ourselves anew to the service of God and neighbour, that we may be peacemakers in our homes, in our community, in our country and in our world.

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ALL:

Lord God,

we pledge ourselves to serve you and all people

in the cause of peace

and for the relief of want and suffering,

and for the praise of your name.

Guide us by your Spirit.

Give us wisdom; give us courage; give us hope;

and keep us faithful, now and always.ÌýÌý Amen.

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PRECENTOR:

The hymn ‘Eternal Father strong to save’ is sometimes called the Naval hymn. The final verse is used regularly by all branches of the Armed Forces.

We sing it now before the final blessing given by the Chaplain of the Fleet.

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CHOIR/ORGAN/ALL: HYMN: Eternal Father, strong to save (Melita)

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The Venerable Andrew Hillier:

Go forth into the world in peace; be of good courage;

hold fast that which is good; render to no one evil for evil;

strengthen the fainthearted ; support the weak;

help the afflicted; honour all people;

love and serve the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit;

and the blessing of God Almighty,

the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit

be with you all

and remain with you always.

ALL: Amen.

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THE ROYAL MARINES BAND - Band of Brothers.

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RADIO 4 CLOSING ANNOUNCEMENT:

Band of Brothers –Ìýplayed by Musicians from the Band of His Majesty's Royal Marines Collingwood, led by Corporal Elsie Warner.

Sunday Worship came live from Portsmouth Cathedral. It was led by the Reverend Dr Jo Spreadbury, and the preacher was the Very Reverend Dr Anthony Cane. The Cathedral Choir was conducted by Dr David Price, and the organist was Sachin Gunga. The producer was Philip Billson.Ìý Next week Sunday Worship comes from Big Church Festival held annually in West Sussex.