Welby: She had an ability to heal and understand
THE Archbishop of Canterbury described the Queen as a ‘precious blessing’ who had the ability to ‘heal and understand’ – a gift he said she has passed on to her son the King.
The Most Rev Justin Welby acknowledged that much of the country will be ‘navigating their way around the raw and ragged edges of grief’ in the wake of her death.
Delivering his sermon at Canterbury Cathedral yesterday morning as the Queen’s coffin left Balmoral to begin its journey to her final resting place, he commemorated the late monarch’s unique ability to treat all people as ‘treasured’ and ‘transcend cultures, languages and nations’.
Describing her as the ‘most wonderful example of a Christian life’, he said she taught the world more about God and grace than any other contemporary figure.
‘We remember her not for what she had, but for what she gave. What a precious blessing. How precious she was therefore to us, and how keenly we feel her loss,’ he said. The archbishop said that King Charles III holds the same ability to ‘heal and understand’ people as his revered late mother.
‘Those who met Her Majesty were always struck by her ability to make them feel as though they were the most important, the only person in the room, the only person in the street, in the crowd.
‘King Charles III has the same ability, to see the value of each person as God sees them,’ he told worshippers. Mr Welby recalled seeing Charles at the Lady Chapel in Liverpool Cathedral after a service for fallen police officers in 2008. He said Charles talked to every person in the room, among them a young mother who had recently lost her husband. ‘By the time His Majesty had done the rounds, every person there, and I quote that young widow, felt they mattered uniquely and found some healing,’ Mr Welby recalled.
In a similarly touching moment, the archbishop recalled the Queen inviting a Rwandan woman, who had escaped the genocide but lost her family, to sit with her at the end of a lunch and they spoke for some 20 minutes.
Mr Welby told worshippers: ‘When I spoke to her later, she said there was healing.’
He added: ‘Both Her late Majesty and His Majesty treat others as special because, for both, their faith is built on the same rock – the rock of Christ.’
Paying tribute to her ‘wisdom and reconciliation’, he recalled how the Queen chose to ‘extend the hand of friendship to former IRA commander Martin McGuinness despite their differences and painful history’.
The encounter in 2012 was symbolic as the IRA murdered her beloved cousin Lord Mountbatten in a bombing in 1979.
Concluding his sermon, Mr Welby said: ‘This is a moment of deep grief, indeed. As Her Majesty said herself, “grief is the price we pay for love”.
‘But that love has in it the reality of hope that can lift heavy hearts, heal wearied spirits, for it is love that originates in God.’
The service ended with a rendition of God Save The King.
It came as remembrance services for the Queen were held in churches up and down the country, while Jews, Muslims, Sikhs and people of other faiths also paid tribute to the monarch.
‘Example of a Christian life’