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| Queen Elizabeth II as a girl, by Philip de Lázló |
Lord , now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.
An old lady, a very old lady, has died. As you might expect, her children, her grandchildren, her great grandchildren, her friends and relations mourn her. They find consolation no doubt in the old lady's unshakeable Christian faith. Perhaps they remember the words of the preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes we have just heard read whose magnificent poem echoes down the centuries, and find solace after a long life well lived in his words from which none of us can escape: there is a time to die. Thus a beloved person is lost to those around her who loved her, and is mourned, as we all may hope and wish to be mourned.
That is all perfectly normal.
So what is it that is happening to us and to many, many millions of people not just here in the United Kingdom, but around the world, which makes this old lady's death leave us feeling so profoundly moved and so bereft? Why is it that we feel such genuine and heartfelt grief? This is not normal; this is extraordinary.
It is not that the old lady was some titanic writer or scientist, some politician or soldier who had led nations to triumph or glory, some Mandela or Tolstoy or Newton or Napoleon. Not at all. She was an honest, decent, hardworking woman with a sharp sense of humour and a heavenly smile; an iron memory for faces, a fascination with people, a great expertise in bloodstock, an affection for this place which she often visited, and a quiet but profound Christian faith, the rock on which she built her life. Could we find other people, whom perhaps we know and love ourselves in our own families with similar qualities? Yes, we could, though we would be very hard pressed to find someone who was her equal in expertise on breeding race horses.
So what is going on? Why is the death of this one old lady, our late Queen Elizabeth II, so profoundly moving? Not just here in Britain, but around the world? Because it is profoundly moving, and if you do not feel it, there is perhaps something a little missing in you.
The answer I think is this. Through the genetic lottery of hereditary monarchy she had, not of her choice, laid upon her a task, from which she could not honourably escape, of almost intolerable weight. The task was to inhabit a role - and I use the word borrowed from the theatre deliberately - a role which meant that every day of her long life was constrained and shaped and observed; which meant that she sacrificed virtually all her freedom and voluntarily circumscribed her own individuality; a role which made us all feel that we owned her.
What was this role, and who was the ruthless playwright who scripted it?
Well, the role was to embody, physically, the values and traditions of the nations of which she was sovereign. And do it forever, for all her life.
Who wrote this terrifying script? The answer to that is: look in the mirror. We did, her peoples. We insisted she undertake it, and were often very quick to criticise from the cheap seats if we detected - usually wholly unfairly - any falling off in her performance.
Could she have refused the part? Yes, in theory she could, her uncle did, though she regarded such escapism with contempt. Could she have made a mess of it and failed our expectations? Yes indeed she could have done - a good many of her ancestors did make a spectacular mess of it. But she - did not. Aged not much older than you boys, at her twenty first birthday, she looked her future in the eye, accepted it, and pledged her life to fulfilling the role we had laid on her for the rest of her life.
Now you may say - "it was just a role - you've said it yourself, Provost - all play-acting processions and stage-set palaces" . But if you do say that you misunderstand in a profound way what it is that makes a nation, a people, a community, a family even, work.
Let me tell you one story from my own life to illustrate what I mean. When I was Minister of State in the Foreign Office during and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I had the honour to receive in my grand office, which overlooked Whitehall and the Cenotaph, the first Foreign Secretary of free, non communist Poland.
It was the day of the opening of Parliament. We held our talks, while outside there was the noise of the preparation of the great procession when the monarch, escorted by the Household Cavalry, travels in the royal coach from Buckingham Palace to Parliament. There were bands playing, commands shouted, the clash of arms coming to the Present. It became clear to me that my Polish colleague wanted to watch the parade rather than to talk to me. So we put our papers aside and stood by the window and watched. He turned to me, this hero of anti communist resistance, who had helped free his country and said: "Minister, what we are watching matters. The communists robbed us of our rituals".
He was right.
He might have quoted Shakespeare; Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida:
There is a mystery - with whom relation
Durst not meddle - in the soul of state,
Which hath an operation more divine
Than breath or pen can give expression to.
No society or community can survive long without the rituals which embody what Shakespeare calls the state's soul - the ideals and dreams to which that society wishes to aspire, though all societies fail much of the time to achieve them. As another book of the old Testament puts it: "Where there is no vision, the people perish."
Some countries choose as Britain does, to have a hereditary constitutional monarch whom we require to embody that vision, that soul of our community, of our nationhood. Without thinking, often, what we are asking, we lay upon an individual human being what is a tremendous duty. We choose the person in an ancient way, by heredity, and require them to undertake the near impossible task of representing the sort of values to which we aspire and then to keep those values themselves safe from what Winston Churchill called the rancour and asperity of party politics - rancour and asperity which are inseparable from democracy but which, unless they are bounded by some sense of shared service to the national community can shake a nation to pieces.
So there we have it. This old lady - one of us, one of the ordinary human race - had that burden laid upon her, that extraordinary duty - to represent the very soul of the nation - of all the nations she served - to keep that soul safe and separate from the necessary power struggles beneath - and by becoming the very exemplar of service to give us something to love and to serve, and yes, sometimes something even to die for - and to do all this as a real, living, breathing, person. That is what she accepted all those years ago and having accepted the burden, she carried it all her long life without missing a beat.
That is what she did. And I think no one in the thousand years and more of our monarchy, ever did it better. That is why we, and all those millions feel bereft, and why we are right so to feel.
Now this strange ancient institution of monarchy provides also the antidote to the feeling of loss that so many feel. It comes, this antidote, much in the same way that it comes in many families. On the day that my own beloved mother died, some years back, another of her great grandchildren was born: life goes on. On the day that the Queen died, King Charles succeeded and in his own powerful and moving words on Friday made clear not only that he well understands the burden that he now carries on our behalf, but accepts it and will to the best of his own ability, carry it as his mother did. So we mourn, but we also celebrate: the story goes on. All the values of service, self-effacement, and duty, often so under-rated in the rat-races for power, money or fame which surround us, find a new quiet champion on whom we place the old burden, and who we look to with hope to carry on the work.
So that is why so many millions mourn: it is our way of saying "thank you" and for showing that we understand how well that quietly heroic old lady represented to us and for us all that is best in us. It shows that we know in our hearts that without such a rock of service on which to build our fractious human society so much will be lost. It reminds us that without that vision of duty and shared obligation, the people may indeed perish.
Thank you.
We offer the Sermon above, with acknowledgment and gratitude, but without apologies. It was preached by the Provost of Eton College, Lord Waldegrave of North Hill, on 11th September to the boys of that School, the beginning of Term. It sums up the spirit in which all members of the Order should approach their service of our fellow men. Only an accident of history has separated our beloved Order from our equally beloved Monarchy. The Catholics of Great Britain have never allowed that accident to separate them from the service of all that is good in this Realm. Let us pray for Queen Elizabeth. May She rest in peace.
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