Voices and trumpets are stilled. All the articles of Regalia are in place. Elizabeth rises from prayer to stand next to St. Edward’s Throne, as a groom might stand at the altar, waiting for his bride. In this case, the Chair awaited Her Majesty. She was soon to be “lifted up” to the seat of consecrated monarchy. She would never sit in this chair again in her life.
Archbishop Fisher had spent the month of April preparing a book of devotional material for Her Majesty’s use, that he might highlight for her the spiritual glories and the temporal duties that her Coronation Ceremony would seal upon her future. In the last weeks before Coronation Day, he was filling a busy schedule, speaking and preaching, calling the people of the nation not only to the joy of the event, but to the holy significance of it. Despite grumblings from time to time, Britain is an exuberant monarchy. In St. Paul’s Cathedral on the evening of Trinity Sunday, only three days before the Coronation, the Archbishop spoke these words:
“The Queen knows, and we too must understand, that all the music and colour and pageantry of that great solemnity is not a piece of glorious humanism, nor a display of boastful nationalism. In the Service of her consecration, coronation, and Communion the Queen comes, and takes us with her, in to the presence, of the living God.”
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“ . . . the Queen comes, and takes us with her, in to the presence of the living God.” This is just what we are privileged to do! When we walk with God, when we are filled with His Spirit, others have to be with God when they are with us! O Lord God! Grant that our eyes may be opened to see how great this consecration is!
“Consecration . . . coronation . . . and Communion,” were the elements of the Service that the Archbishop highlighted, and all were brought into focus. Although we do but seldom give attention to the royal diadems we wear and the crowns laid up for us, much less the chair upon which we have been seated, each of those three elements of the ceremony has bearing in our lives.
Let’s return to the wedding analogy for a moment.
A bride at the altar is a woman when she comes through the door, but she is about to be made a “wife.” She gives her consent to it. She and the man who waits for her there both consent to the vows of marriage. Those present will recognize them as something that they were not before they came. The minister or priest, by duly given authority, pronounces them, “husband and wife,” which before spoken, was not a true statement.
Now, “as long as they both shall live,” they are joined together in holy matrimony – their consent to be joined together in spiritual and civil union culminates in their recognition as married people. Her Majesty’s government and noble peers had been summoned to speak their consent to her rightful place upon St. Edward’s Chair, and to recognize her as the next consecrated monarch of the realm.
By the consent of God Most High, we are made one with Him in His Son, Jesus Christ. We are recognized in heaven to be the people of God, the sheep of His pasture, we are in Him the House not made with human hands, the place where His glory dwells, the Bride of Christ. It won’t do for God to be Majesty and for us to be anarchists or apathetic, either one.
We are about to see something extraordinary. Elizabeth was Queen because her peoples recognized her as Queen and Majesty. Throughout Europe, monarchies and dynasties fell like houses of cards in the 1800’s and early 1900’s; when the people would not have a King, they did away with their “royals.” These former monarchs fled, mostly to England. A few have been restored, others have not; for many, they have pedigree, but no power, no peoples, no recognition and no consent to reign.
Interestingly, the children of the very brightest movie stars are not of interest to us the way royal children are. Perhaps it is because the culture of monarchy is so ancient that it still stirs in the imagination, even when thrones are removed, or perhaps, when God ordains a royal family, by the prayers of the Church and of the nation, they stay ordained. Perhaps politics cannot undo ordaining!
Either way, we are about to see something that happened only once in Her Majesty’s life, as was true of many of the things that happened on June 2, 1953, in Westminster Abbey. Something that had to happen before she could take her place on St. Edward’s ancient throne …
“Dieu et Mon Droit: – “God is My Right” …Royal Arms
Sodacan, by permission
Cor Unum Abbey 