The Very Reverend Dr John Hall, Dean of Westminster. The life of Westminster Abbey is so rich in the anniversaries of the men and women who are buried or memorialised here and of the great events that have happened through the thousand years and more of our wonderful story that to say of any year that it is likely to go down in history as remarkable is to make a bold claim. And yet, it is I believe justifiable in relation to this year that we are all experiencing.

The Very Reverend Dr John Hall, Dean of Westminster. It is impossible for us to know what Queen Elizabeth I thought when she signed the Charter but it would not be surprising if she had thought of the turmoil the Abbey had undergone in the previous twenty years. The Charter makes it clear that she intended to end the turmoil. Of this renewed Collegiate Church, the Charter says that it is ‘in all future times to endure and to be inviolably observed.’ And so it has been for the past 450 years. There seems every reason to suppose it will continue as long as there is time on earth.

Archbishop Tutu in his sermon on Ascension Day says that through worship we must 'open our eyes to the essential sacredness of life' and oppose injustice.

The late and slow emergence of daffodils and tulips after our long cold winter and in our late spring has somehow seemed right this year. In previous years I have often found a worrying mismatch between a blazing spring full of colour and vibrancy and the penitential Lenten mood of self-denial and abstinence. This year, in London anyway, the emergence of spring has, almost if not quite, waited for Easter: as if now nature with the Church is ready to celebrate the arrival of the season of hope and joy and new life.

The Very Reverend Dr John Hall, Dean of Westminster. This evening the Lord Jesus Christ welcomes us to a meal, to supper with him and his closest friends. The occasion is unusual; this will be no ordinary supper. The circumstances are strange, a little disturbing: there are threats and rumours all around. We are in an odd place: the Lord of all has nowhere of his own, nowhere to lay his head, but a room has been found; preparations have been made.

The Most Reverend and Right Honourable Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury. Archbishop Oscar Romero is commemorated as a martyr in the Church of England’s liturgical calendar on 24 March each year. His image is among ten statues of martyrs of the twentieth century placed over the Great West Doors of Westminster Abbey in 1998.

The Very Reverend Dr John Hall, Dean of Westminster. Celebrating the Annunciation in Passiontide helps us see both the beauty of God’s creation and the need for atonement between humanity and God.

‘Nothing less than Christ will do. We are to be imitators of Christ.’

Lying behind the modern democratic political system is a shadow structure that acknowledges the Sovereignty of Christ. The Dean said it was an important question how far elected politicians and we personally acknowledge in practice God’s Sovereignty.

To mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species, Nick Spencer, author of Darwin and God, delivers the 2009 Gore lecture, tracing Darwin's religious biography and asking what we can learn from this most courteous and humane of scientists.