29th June 2010 at 5:00 pm
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.
On 21st May, we celebrated with great joy and solemnity the 450th anniversary of the charter of Queen Elizabeth I that established the collegiate foundation which is at the heart of the contemporary Abbey. In that celebration, when we honoured the great 16th century Queen who allowed herself to be described as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, we also marked the final stage of the story of the breakaway of the Church of England and of the Abbey from the jurisdiction of the Pope. For us here, that marked a decisive and significant change, for papal jurisdiction had been more influential in the life of the Abbey than almost anywhere in England. Abbots of Westminster, from perhaps as early as the 11th century, certainly from the 13th century, had answered direct to the Pope, bypassing the jurisdiction of English bishops, both the Bishop of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury. After their election as abbots, they had travelled to Rome for the confirmation of their appointment. In the 13th century, Abbot Richard de Ware, during whose rule the first stage of this current church building was achieved, became so familiar with Rome that he worked hard to ensure that the finest craftsmanship available in that city could be deployed to enhance Henry III’s church and St Edward the Confessor’s tomb. The Cosmati pavement in front of the High Altar and in the Shrine is the result.
Throughout those long years of papal supremacy, however, no Pope visited the Abbey. Only one Englishman ever became Pope, a man from St Albans, Nicholas Breakspear, in the 12th century, known as Adrian IV. He might conceivably have visited the Abbey at some point, but not as Pope. When Pope John Paul II visited these shores in 1982, he came close to us but passed the Abbey by. On 17th September, this year of years, Pope Benedict XVI, if all goes to plan, will finally visit the Abbey. He will pray at the Grave of the Unknown Warrior and in the Shrine of St Edward the Confessor. He and the Archbishop of Canterbury will address the congregation. It will be the single ecumenical event of the short papal visit to Great Britain, and an historic occasion.
This feast of St Peter the Apostle allows us some moments of reflection on our attitude to this forthcoming visit. For many of those present, there will be an element of poignancy as the successor of Peter as Bishop of Rome, whose protective influence here was so powerful for 600 years, comes to this great Church dedicated to his original predecessor, 450 years after the end of the papal supremacy and final confirmation of royal supremacy. Possibly for some, there will be a degree of distaste or distress, arising either from a residue of anti-Roman Catholic sentiment or from reaction to the continuing news reporting of scandal. For others, there might simply be a fascination with the arrival here of a globally recognised figure. Together we should rise above such thoughts, however justified any of them may be. We should lift our eyes to the horizon. Perhaps tantalizingly on the horizon, or just beyond the horizon we can see, is the prospect of the reconciliation of all Christians, Christian unity.
It can easily seem to us now that the prospect of Christian unity has receded far beyond the horizon. The unsuccessful schemes for the unity of the Church of England and the Methodist Church forty years ago left in their wake hurt and bewilderment. The covenant between the Churches in 2003 has so far had little effective impact. The ten propositions for unity between the Church of England and the Free Churches in the 1970s also went nowhere. More recently, the creation of Churches Together in England brought the Roman Catholic Church within the framework of the ecumenical instruments and the papal visit in 1982 seemed to hold out a wonderful prospect of reconciliation between the two Churches’ ministries. And yet, with the Church of England’s decision in 1992 to ordain women to the sacred priesthood and what feels like a hardened attitude in Rome, there are few signs now that the process of recovering the structural unity that was until the 16th century ours in the West, still further the unity that was the whole Church’s until the great schism of the 11th century, has any early hope of success.
And yet, how much closer is that prospect now than it was a hundred years ago. Yesterday I attended a Solemn Mass celebrating the centenary of the consecration of Westminster Cathedral. As a representative of Westminster Abbey I was accorded the highest honour, sitting opposite the Archbishop’s throne and behind Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor and the Westminster auxiliary bishops. The relationship between our two churches and groups of clergy goes deep, as does the relationship between the Abbey and Methodist Central Hall. Each of those churches, built a hundred years ago in a style markedly different from that of the Abbey, Byzantine and Edwardian classical respectively, and on a scale to rival the Abbey, was a symbol of challenge to the Established Church and the ambition of their denominations for the supreme position at the heart of national life. All that seems so tired and so long ago. Commitment to partnership, and to Christian mission each from our own base, is total, backed by genuine mutuality of friendship and support.
When the Pope comes to the Abbey in September he will pray for the unity of all Christians. This longing for unity has been a major theme of the papacy and of the work of the Vatican since the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Moreover, unity is no longer seen in Rome simply as the integrity of the Roman Catholic Church and of reconciliation to it through individual submissions to the see of Peter; unity can and should come about between the Churches through the reconciliation of ministries, the mutual recognition of the validity of ministries. That might seem a very distant prospect. It might be hard for us to see how it can be achieved. But those of us who have seen both the apartheid regime in South Africa and the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe transformed must believe that there can be rapid change in God’s good time. Nothing is impossible, where the prayer and the will are strong enough.
No reconciliation between Christians can fail to recognise the primacy of honour accorded from the very beginning of the Church to the see of Peter, as I said in my sermon on this day two years ago. Last year, I spoke of the nature of authority in the whole Church and the need within the Anglican Communion for a better understanding of the role and sources of authority in the Church. I shall not now repeat the arguments in those sermons, which remain available to read on the Abbey website.
Petertide has for many years been a time of ordination to diaconal and priestly ministry. In particular I give God thanks for the thirty five years today since Mervyn Lord Bishop of Southwark ordained me deacon. This is a time when we think of vocation, of God’s call to us. What we can learn ourselves afresh on this day, when we honour our patron St Peter, and as we prepare to welcome in September his undoubted successor in our own day, is the need, as part of our vocation at the Abbey, to pray and work for reconciliation between peoples, each of us to commit part of our daily prayer to a fervent plea for the unity of the Church and of all Christians.
Our prayer for unity will be lifted up on the prayers of our blessed Saviour himself, who, the night before he gave up himself for us all, prayed, ‘I ask … that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.’ May that high priestly prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ be fulfilled and our own prayers be united day by day with his.
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