Vivant Carolus Rex et Camilla Regina!
My many friends and acquaintances will need no explanation for my getting up at 5:00 a.m. this past Saturday morning followed by Bonnie moments later, the two of us thereafter glued to the television (while thirstily downing a pot of tea) for a good four hours, I till taking off for the St Catharines Downtown Market, she through the balcony appearance of King Charles and Queen Camilla. Having dreaded what poisonous concoction the feeble senior bishops of the Church of England and the Woke Brigade would come up with, I was pleasantly gratified and most doxologically disposed towards the Lord that the essence of a rite delving back to the Byzantine and Holy Roman Empires survived unscathed. For the abbreviated ceremony (down to two hours for C III from four for E II) was ultimately not about Charles Philip Arthur George, eldest son of Philip and Elizabeth Mountbatten, but was rather a proclamation in word, song, and sign of the universal kingship of Jesus Christ the humiliated Ebed Athonai/Servant of the LORD who on the Galilean mountain majestically assured His stunned apostles that ‘All authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth.’ Sadly, Archbishop Welby lacked the courage to proclaim this truth, knowing of course that he would have been stoned had he tried, but preachers around the world now have a wondrous image through which they may expound the essence of the Ascension of our blessed Lord less than two weeks from now.
Of course, a hate-filled republican fringe put in unappreciated appearances here and there bearing placards boasting ‘Not My King’. In their despite, as one who lay through Her late Majesty’s coronation in a beloved aunt and godmother’s front room at less than four months of age and notwithstanding whatever reservations I may have impertinently expressed in conversation and in print concerning the longest serving Prince of Wales in history, I look forward to wearing a pin or a tee-shirt sporting the image of Charles III with the script ‘Yes My King’. For there was something spine-chillingly Christological about the sight of the kneeling Charles, stripped down to his linen shirt following the sacred, rightly private moment of sacramental anointing. The Holy Spirit thereby wrought an unashamed bond too deep for adequate verbal expression between little old me and my rightful sovereign lord in two of his earthly realms. Bless my soul, I got very teary at God Save The King as sung following this morning’s closing hymn.
Surprisingly—or perhaps not so surprisingly—even the most republican-leaning of the UK quality newspapers acknowledged the spiritual and emotional force of the extended series of rites and ceremonies that began, as one of its writers put it, with Their Majesties, clad in white ermine on their carriage ride to the Abbey, ‘looking like a pair of elderly polar bears on tour,’ a feature of the day’s proceedings surely laden with oodles of ‘Canadian content’! It was ludicrous but also magnificent: the coronation stirred every emotion | King Charles coronation | The Guardian I hope Kurt Reinhardt soon pens an appropriate emotion-plumbing poem aimed at the whole range of loyal, indifferent, and hostile hearts in this vast Dominion. Get to it, Fr Kurt!
As a devout Anglican Charles III has spent a goodly number of the hours of his life ‘meekly kneeling upon his knees’, as a rubric spoken into the Morning and Evening Prayer of the BCP puts it. For over forty years I have sorely missed the historic Anglican practice of habitually kneeling for prayer, a custom observed at Redeemer Fort Wayne and other flagship parishes of our communion, and increasingly undertaken in the St Catharines seminary chapel which serves each Sunday also as a parish church. I have long thought it an ominous sign of the times that kneeling for prayer has dramatically gone out of fashion within Anglicanism over the last generation. The pews have been ripped out of the main Anglican parish church in the centre of St Catharines, and I noticed at a recent recital there by our brilliant young organist at Resurrection how the wooden chairs that replace them offer no hassock to ease kneeling on the tile floor. While kneelers were provided for the King and the Queen, the rest of the congregation casually sat for prayer and as Their Majesties seemed to stand to receive Holy Communion the King may have been the only one present who actually knelt in the course of the service. A decision was taken to reduce the volume of attendance by members of the two houses of the British Parliament, who should all have been present to renew the covenant between Crown and people as ordained in 1689, their place being taken by a host of celebrities and beneficiaries of the civic good works driven by the King during his long years of apprenticeship to his Mother of sacred and glorious memory. One of my daughters was dismayed to see so few of the guests in the Abbey performing the customary bows and curtsies to the King and Queen in the processions in and out of the church. Honour the King by slight adjustment of legs and neck, but when fearing God in cultic style the bending of knees is truly the only decent way to go
Liturgiologists in our midst, not a few of whom are found among our Gottesdienst readership, may wish to examine the official liturgy prepared for yesterday’s great service (The Authorised Liturgy for the Coronation Rite of His Majesty King Charles III - Anglican Ink © 2023), and to compare it not only with its predecessors from previous reigns but also with its parallels from the days of pre-revolutionary Christian Europe. Realisation that the sovereign being anointed, enthroned, and crowned is not actually the Star of the liturgical show but merely the imperfect icon thereof goes a long way to explaining the barrage of contempt fired by the unbelieving elites against the institution of monarchy and the men and women who put it into effect here below. Preachers, teachers, and indeed all witnesses to Christ on earth now enjoy a privileged moment of having an image at hand through which they can testify against the assumption that this is a closed universe whose rational residents have no hope beyond bodily death and who face no judgement beyond their own and that of the bearers of brute power. As our Canadian descent into grinning totalitarianism continues, we hear that the Canadian Government plans a redesign of our country’s coat of arms in which they will replace crosses with maple leaves and snowflakes. Trudeau gov't to remove religious symbols from Canadian Coat of Arms - LifeSite (lifesitenews.com) But snowflakes and maple leaves lack the saving power of the holy Cross! Alas, the head clerics of this nation’s major churches seem disinclined to lift high the Cross from pulpit and in writing. If I were a Finnish Pietist, I would pray for a Revival; but wait, perhaps my Methodist great-grandmother who became a Salvation Army officer would prompt me to do just that.
In the meantime, as I intend to pray an Our Father each day for my gracious anointed sovereign lord the King, leaving the Heavenly Father to dispose the effect of the petitions as He not I sees fit, orate mecum fratres et sorores graced to be subjects of the Crown:;
O LORD our heavenly Father, high and mighty, King of kings and Lord of; lords, the only Ruler of princes, who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers upon earth; Most heartily we beseech thee with thy favour to behold our most gracious Sovereign Lord King Charles; and so replenish him with the grace of Thy Holy Spirit, that he may alway incline to thy will and walk in thy way: Endue him plenteously with heavenly gifts; grant him in health and wealth long to live; strengthen him that he may vanquish and overcome all his enemies; and finally, after this life, he may attain everlasting joy and felicity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.