The Bishop of London was the guest preacher at a service to celebrate the Diamond wedding anniversary of the Queen and Prince Philip at St Paul’s Onslow Square last month.

The service, which was led by HTB Vicar Nicky Gumbel, was broadcast on BBC Radio Four and heard by an estimated 1.9 million people.

The HTB Chamber Choir sang music from the original royal wedding, including Wesley’s ‘Blessed be the God and Father’ and the hymn Praise My Soul the King of Heaven.

The Chamber Choir also sang O Taste and See by R. Vaughan Williams and the Gaelic Blessing by J. Rutter.

The music was directed by HTB’s Classical Music director Simon Dixon and soloists were sopranos Anna Kirby and Letitia Havers.

The Bishop of London had specifically requested that the service be held at St Paul’s Onslow Square because of its links with The Marriage Course.
Nicky and Sila Lee, founders of The Marriage Course, led the prayers.

Around 140 members of the HTB/St Paul’s congregation gathered for the service an hour earlier than usual at 8am because of the live broadcast.
The Holy Communion service at St Paul’s is usually held at 9am.

Speaking on the subject of marriage, the Bishop (pictured below) told the congregation ‘Marriage is a way of life in which, at its best, as the poet says, ‘Each asks from each what each most wants to give and each awakes in each what else would never be.’

He continued, ‘This is the way of married love: we give out of what we have been given and in doing so we bring one another into fuller being.
‘Individuals turned in upon themselves shrink but as we love, as we cherish, as we serve one another, we open out into our full spiritual beauty.

‘We are on the way which leads to life as the persons God intends us to be.

Mystery

‘Marriage is an entry into the mystery of spiritual life in which we discover that the more we give of self, the more we become rich in soul, the more we go beyond ourselves, the more we become our true selves.’

‘Jesus Christ is the pioneer of this way of loving and that is why marriage is also the entry into the mystery of his love for us, his friends.

‘His love did not acknowledge any limits, save those imposed by respect for the beloved. His love was unoppressive, unconstraining.

‘In marriage, we become artists. We must remember to treat our partners as our supreme work of art and do so while leaving them space because marriage is a way that transforms so long as we do not harbour ambitions to reform one another. There must be no coercion if the Spirit is to flow; each must give the other space and freedom.

‘Now of course as the reality of God has faded from so many lives, there has been an inflation of expectation: the personal relations alone without his presence will supply meaning and happiness in life.

‘And that is to load our partners with too much pressure. We’re all incomplete; we all need the love which is secure, not oppressive.

‘We all need the mutual forgiveness if we are to thrive. ‘Forgive’, counsels St Paul ‘as the Lord forgave you’. Marriage is a gift, held out to us which we can either embrace or ignore.

‘It is possible still to live egotistically under the form of marriage but at it’s spiritual heart, as we move out to the other person in love, following the example of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit is quickened within us and can increasingly as the years unfold because the best wine is left until the end, can increasingly fill our lives with light.’

The Bishop went on to say, ‘There sometimes seems to be a certain reluctance to celebrate marriage, for fear lest our celebration is seemed as condemnation of other forms of relationship.

‘But if a society does not honour marriage, ‘an honourable estate instituted of God himself in the time of mans innocency,’ as it says in the Prayer Book, then we shall be asking for and we shall get social chaos and an impoverishment of our social life.

‘Therefore beloved, let us support and uphold all those who have chosen to enter into the mystery of marriage and tomorrow let us especially give thanks for the sixty year long marriage of our Queen and Prince Philip.’