Address on the occasion of death of her majesty queen Elizabeth the queen mother

The whole nation is grieving, is crying, wholeheartedly, heart-broken, because of the new bereavement that has greeted her. The death of the Queen Mother is not only a private affair of the Royal Family. The whole nation of Britain, both those who are born in it and those who have offered us hospitality and brotherly love are crying because they are bereaved.

The Queen Mother was not simply the mother of the Queen, the widow of the previous King; she was an image, infinitely precious, to the whole nation. The span of her life covers more than a hundred years. In the First World War she lost a brother; and how many, how many of those whom she loved died in the fields of battle.

And then, she served this country with faithfulness, in a total gift of self. We will always remember her in her simplicity and directness, in her generous gift of self. It is not an easy thing to meet every person, every circumstance, with an open heart; and however your own heart is broken to smile and to console and to comfort and to give courage. And this is what she did in the course of her whole life, and particularly during the tragic years of the last war.

She will always be remembered as the queen who was glad that her home had been bombed, because now she no longer was ashamed of the suffering of others. She will always be remembered as one who, however tragic her life was, could respond with a smile, with warmth, with tenderness to the needs of others.

At the end of the service, before you come to venerate the cross, I will take a panikhida for her memory, asking God to receive her with tenderness, with love, and allow her to enter into the eternal joy of eternity. Because we who are still alive on earth are bereaved: she is no longer in our midst. But she has entered into the kingdom of eternal life.

Remember the words of St Paul, For me, death is a gain, because as long as I live in the flesh I am separated from Christ.

She is no longer separated from the Living God. She is now partaking of life eternal, with a fullness which she could not possess on earth but which she already began to sense; because to be a person like her with a simplicity of faith and the directness as we saw in her is not possible otherwise than communing with the Living God, the God of love, a love of tenderness, a love of sacrifice.

We shall pray for her; but in our hearts we shall also ask her to pray for the country for which she gave her life; for her daughter; for all those who have venerated her and loved her. Amen.