Queen reminds General Synod of its essential mission
by Archbishop Cranmer:
The 11th General Synod of the Church of England was opened yesterday, and the Supreme Governor was absent for the first time since Synod was created more than 50 years ago. Absent in body, that is, but certainly not in spirit, as the message she sent to be vicariously delivered by the Earl of Wessex was infused with her essential spirit of faith, devotion and service to the gospel.
This Synod will sit for five years. Nobody is saying it, but Her Majesty alluded to it: “None of us can slow the passage of time,” she wrote, perhaps mindful that, at 95 years old, she was missing what is almost certainly the last Synod of her reign. She may, of course, live as long as her mother did, but not even this supremest of Supreme Governors will live forever, as the lyric of ‘Zadok the Priest’ entreats. “Long to reign over us”, certainly, but no Amen or Hallelujah can slow the passage of time.
Her message was short, as the best sermons are, and in just those very few minutes the Earl of Wessex spoke, we heard the essential Anglican identity of communion, ecumenism, and patristic witness:
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