Start of Term Cathedral Service

As is traditional here at King’s, pupils from Lower Fourth to Upper Sixth gathered in Worcester Cathedral this morning for the Start of Term Service.

Unfortunately, due to storm damage caused earlier in the year, we could not bring the Foundation together this year; however, the occasion was still a special one for our Senior School and Sixth Form Students.

Following a rousing hymn and prayers from the new Heads of School, pupils were addressed by Headmaster, Mr Doodes who said,

“There have been images over the last week of extraordinary moments in our nation’s story. It is only a week since the news of the Queen’s death was shared with the world, but in the intervening period we have seen the announcement placed on the gates of Buckingham Palace, a hearse driving through the majestic hills and mountains of Scotland, a procession up the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, thousands of people streaming into St Giles’s Cathedral, her final arrival at Buckingham Palace, and then yesterday the extraordinary sight of the Royal Family marching behind the Queen, the Imperial Crown resting next to a wreath of flowers picked from Balmoral and Windsor Castle, proceeding to Westminster Hall where, over the coming four days, an estimated 400,000 people will pay their respects. As I came into work this morning at 7am, Radio 4 were estimating the queue to be two miles long, with people expecting to spend up to 10 hours waiting to view Her Majesty’s coffin supported on its catafalque and surrounded by Beefeaters standing with head bowed in silent respect.

“These pictures will stay in your memory. Their significance may not now seem immediately apparent, but you are watching history unfold, watching things that will be talked about in classrooms in a hundred years, seeing this as a moment in our country’s journey that has meaning, and will mean change. But as we sit here, ready to bury our late Queen, and not yet having crowned our new King, that change is not apparent, and is not yet written.

“In our assembly on Monday, where we formally appointed the Heads of Houses and the Monitors, we reflected on Service, on how that word has been used so much over the last week, and how in giving everything to her nation, the late Queen, despite the riches, wealth, gold, and the glitter of light through diamonds, was in many ways the greatest servant of the nation. And in giving her life as the nation’s servant, the state has honoured and thanked her by raising her up on her death as one of, if not the most, significant Britons in the last 500 years.

“The last state funeral was given to Winston Churchill, a commoner, someone not born into royalty, but, who through his leadership, determination, his service, gave the nation hope at a time of its greatest need during World War Two. It is not, therefore, only royalty to whom a nation can show its highest gratitude for service and loyalty.

“That our late Queen, and Winston Churchill, were servants to our nation, are I feel is without doubt.

“Yet great leadership, I believe, needs to have something as great as service at its very heart. It needs to have humility.

“You may hear the word used, but what does it mean? It is the faculty of being humble or having a lowly opinion of oneself; it is meekness, lowliness, humbleness; it is the opposite of pride of haughtiness.

“But being humble doesn’t mean sitting glumly in a ditch whipping yourself with old twigs. Henry Ward Beecher in his book Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit stated that ‘humility of a head-on quality – not dragging, miserable, mean feeling. It is not mortified pride. It is one of the noblest and one of the most resplendent of all the experiences of the soul.’

“I find myself disappointed by young men and women who, through the gift of a great education or the luck of circumstance, demonstrate arrogance when they should instead show humble confidence. You will know the type I mean; the person who uses the personal pronoun in all their conversation, who fails to understand that some people may not have had it as easy as them, to disdain show to those who set out to serve them.

“If you sit in a good restaurant, or even if you sit in a mediocre restaurant, it is not hard to spot those with whom you would chose not to spend time. These arrogant creatures are clear to be seen in their communication with waiters. For if you don’t show respect to those waiting on you, then you will never show true respect to others who don’t. It’s centred on humility. If you go into a situation seeing yourself as nothing, they you will then see other things as they are.

“Those who serve you, must, through your manners, politeness, and humility, be served by you.

“In our reading today, Christ says a very simple, yet hugely poignant line, ‘For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’

“I cannot remember a moment in my 45 years when the late Queen, even when resplendent in the robes of her office, wasn’t humble in her behaviour. There is no record of her acting as though she was entitled, or being impudent, or showing an arrogant haughtiness towards those who were there to serve her, whom she was there to serve. Perhaps her humility was a result of her having a true knowledge and awareness of who she really was.

“The first great test of a truly great person, therefore, is humility. This doesn’t mean that, if one is called to greatness, one should doubt one’s power or hesitate in stating opinion, but instead showing an understanding of the relation between what one can do and say, and the rest of the world’s sayings and doings.

“And often the most powerful communication of humility is by one’s actions. It is the way that a teacher picks up a piece of litter from a playground, how a Monitor will talk to the youngest member of the school community without arrogance or pomp, how the Dean of this Cathedral gives you welcome, how an MP will make you feel relaxed in their company, or how an Archbishop greets you as an equal.

“Whether it is in schools, the Church, parliament, or monarchy, all must learn humility as well as teach it.

As Christ has taught us, as the late Queen has shown, and as Thomas a Kempis in The Imitation of Christ instructed, ‘Show yourselves humble in all things.’

“Speak as little as possible of one’s self. Do not to want to manage other people’s affairs. Pass over the mistakes of others. Accept insults and injuries. Be kind and gentle even under provocation. But above all, remember that humility, like darkness, will reveal the heavenly lights.

Amen.”