good morning and welcome to canterbury cathedral not to the dinery garden this morning for a very special reason we've come into the cathedral itself but let's first say it's the 21st of april wednesday the 21st of april and it is the 95th birthday of our queen elizabeth ii on this day we send loving greetings to her majesty on this day of what must be mixed emotions and send our heartfelt prayers and thanksgiving for her long reign and her long life and continue to give thanks for the long life of prince philip but also pray for the whole royal family as it winds her they celebrate the birthday of her majesty and we as a nation and commonwealths and friends throughout the world celebrate her 95th birthday her majesty has an official birthday later in the year and we shall return to those greetings at that time of much more ceremonial for today is a very private occasion as we remember that special birthday but we've come into the cathedral because the 21st of april is also the feast day of saint anselm who was archbishop of canterbury at the end of the 11th century and anselm is buried here in the chapel behind me it's one of the most lovely and our favorite chapel in the cathedral together with the one below st gabriel's chapel but this one is full of interesting facts and objects connected with the life of sin anselm from the past and also from more modern times as you will see so we're going to conduct our prayers today from insides in dan selms chapel and i'll walk through now and invite you to join me so we've now come inside the chapel of sindansel and one of the most interesting ancient remainders from long long ago in the late 12th century is a wall painting the cathedral church would have been covered in wall paintings in those days so little of it remains in gabriel's chapel below has quite a lot of wall painting as an in historic accident because it was walled off but here in the upper cathedral not much remains but here we see now a wall painting of saint paul and the viper on the island of malta story told in the acts of the apostles and it's amazing to think how the chapel would have looked with all its walls covered with pictures from the scriptures and the lives of the saints this gives us a clue at around in the border scholars find all kinds of clues in their puzzling for answers we were talking yesterday in the garden about how matthew's gospel was set as many puzzles and we've got to be a little bit like detectives in finding out how things are and a young friend of ours brian keane who was here a medievalist of of the highest quality in the uh getty museum at the time was spending time with us and came into this chapel and looked at this painting with awestruck wonder and we thought he was admiring the wall painting in fact he was admiring a detail around the edge of the painting which had clearly been copied from a monastery in mongolia of all places showing that at the late 12th century there was a connection right across the world from there it helped him in a thesis he was writing it's amazing how in our thinking as we journey with questions in our minds perhaps in our own field of thinking and scholarship clues are given to us if our eyes and our minds and our spirits are open to receiving them and hearing them of course as well at any moment intuition may give us new clues in any kind of puzzle we're working at well this certainly helped brian when he saw it we should be thinking mostly this morning of the story of saint anselm himself he was born in 1033 in aosta in the alps but became both abit of beck in france and archbishop of canterbury and there are many clues to his life in this place but let's begin to say our prayers on this very special day and we say them in this chapter with the morning light coming through to us oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise in your resurrection o christ let heaven and earth rejoice alleluia blessed are you lord god of our salvation to you be praise and glory forever as once you ransomed your people from egypt and led them to freedom in the promised land so now you have delivered us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of your risen son may we the firstfruits of your new creation rejoice in this new day you have made and praise you for your mighty acts blessed be god father son and holy spirit blessed be god forever the night has passed and the day lies open before us let us pray with one heart and mind as we rejoice in the gift of this new day so may the light of your presence oh god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever amen our psalm on this day this 21st day of the month is psalm 105. o give thanks to the lord and call upon his name make known his deeds among the peoples sing to him sing praises and tell of all his marvelous works rejoice in the praise of his holy name let the hearts of them rejoice who seek the lord seek the lord and his strength seek his face continually remember the marvels he has done his wonders and the judgments of his mouth he brought his people out of egypt with silver and gold there was not one among their tribes that stumbled egypt was glad of their departing for a dread of them had fallen upon them he spread out a cloud for a covering and a fire to light up the night they asked and he brought them quails he satisfied them with the bread of heaven he opened the rock and the waters gushed out and ran in the dry places like a river for he remembered his holy word and abraham his servant so he brought forth his people with joy his chosen ones with singing he gave them the lands of the nations and they took possession of the fruit of their toil that they might keep his statutes and faithfully observe his laws alleluia a special lesson today we have a whole sequence of special lessons on this particular day and the lesson for morning prayer is from the second letter to timothy the first chapter beginning of verse 8. do not be ashamed then of the testimony about our lord or of me his prisoner but join with me in suffering for the gospel relying on the power of god who saved us and called us with a holy calling not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace this grace was given to us in christ jesus before the ages began but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our savior christ jesus who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel for this gospel i was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher and for this reason i suffer as i do but i am not ashamed for i know the one in whom i have put my trust and i am sure that he is able to guard until that day what i have entrusted to him hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me in the faith and love that are in christ jesus guard the good treasure entrusted to you with the help of the holy spirit living in us a lesson which fits the life of anselm who was a really great scholar and his works survive probably the most famous and you can buy them easily in paperback and because they're commonly read proslogian and curdius homo why was god made man as i say he was born in 1033 in ouster in the italian alps and at that time he was born into an extremely wealthy family and they had high hopes for him in all kinds of careers but anselm was always a thinker and a ponderer and he felt himself called to walk about and think in god's good air as to what the lord was calling him to and in telling his story this place is got two very modern in terms of the cathedral church very modern aspects and the first is the altar itself and psalm is buried here and his name anselm is carved on the step on each side and they're more modern editions we have the names of two modern archbishops of canterbury the words simply say remember robert ranci and remember donald coggin and here is what you might think a very strange modern altar to find in a chapel of this sort when i became dean of canterbury in 2001 soon after just a few months afterwards two gentlemen were shown into my uh study without appointment and i stood up and put down my pen to to to greet them they were not elderly but senior looking gentlemen they carried themselves in that way and one was a bishop clearly and i had no idea who these two gentlemen were and they introduced themselves as the president of the independent republic of ouster which is of course within the compass of modern italy and in all things of government looks to the italian state but still is proud of its independence left over from historic times there on the foot of the alps and the other the bishop of ouster himself and i had no idea what they had come for and we sat and we had coffee together and they explained that they had come to offer a gift to this place what they wanted to do was something they had already done for the community at beck the benedictine community in france with which we have very very strong and friendly links and we pray for each other across the uh english channel on thursdays of each week you may have realized that when when you're i'm coming to the live stream services in the cathedral on thursdays there's a memorial of that in this chapel too in an icon that i'm looking at which was painted by the monk there who again is a great friend of both of ours brother raphael and it's an icon of saint anselm and uh land frank who was the prior of beck before anselm anselm became not only prior but abbotted back and in the middle uh our lady herself holding the christ child a sign of the link with beg but these two gentlemen explained that the community of community of ouster who were proud of being the the community in which anselm grew up had already from local aosten marble given an altar to the monastery at beck and later i was to see and be at that altar but for the moment i was listening to a story which was strange to me and they said that they would like to give an altar to stand over the site of the place where anselm's relics lay and would stand here as a sign of the place where he was born and it would be carved in ioster marble and they then said because i was thinking how am i going to get permission for this i was a new boy and i knew that in any cathedral a new work was going to take some time to get permission to put in permanently but in a world heritage site in a place like canterbury cathedral would be more difficult but i was helped by the fact that they said that they had chosen a name that was well known to me um stephen cox an english sculptor in marble whom i had met when he'd come to give a presentation to the dean's conference and since then stephen and his wife judy have become firm friends of fletcher and me and their family is well known to us and i'll mention a bit more about that later but for the moment that was a help because he was very much someone who knew who would execute this work well in marble and the green stone of aosta the marble was what would be used now when the altar was planned and the model given it was simply in the green stone and you you see it here it's it's very beautiful and stephen made a very simple alter and he split the marble as a part of anselm's theology of god inviting people into himself and that invitation is there but when eventually permission was given it took i think four years for the cathedral's fabric commission for england to grant any kind of permission for this to happen and there were four years when both stephen and i had to hold our nerves and keep going with this because we felt it was right what was there before was really just a a wooden uh table from the 1920s covered with an altar cloth of no particular merit and so the model was given and the model showed itself simply in this kind of stone pattern when steven split the piece of marble that she was going to use he found that it was veined in a particular way now the story of anselm is that as a young man when he was walking on the alps in the snow and this morning sun was glistening upon him he suddenly had a vision of being invited into the banquet of heaven and he felt the call to be the one who at the altar would invite people to the bread of heaven and into the interior life of god through jesus christ and that was the turning point in his life that then caused the journey which took him through as a benedictine monk as a scholar and a philosopher and then to be the prior of the abbey at beck and the abbot of beck and finally the archbishop of canterbury here in canterbury but stephen simply carved the marble in this particular way and the interesting thing is that the veinings have the way of speaking all on their own on each side of the entry into the interior of the life of the creator of god himself the veining stretch out like the arms of one hanging on the cross but much more than that if and when i have groups here i invite them round behind because it's a wonderful place to be if one goes behind you're not only with the veinings facing like this in ribs in the snow-capped alps but you're also inviting people through these veinings to the bread of heaven of which our psalm speaks of the people on their journey in the wilderness receiving the bread of heaven this was what anselm felt his vocation to be and the author stands now here as a sign of that because of the wonderful patterns or nations there i'm looking at a mountainscape because of those patterns we keep it without any cloth over it and when we celebrate here which we do often in normal times we simply place a plain white corporal as we call it little cloth here to help us celebrate one year after the consecration of this altar the little sconces were added the consecration had taken place on this particular day in 2006 and rowan williams came with the bishop of aoster rowan by then was the archbishop of canterbury he had actually come at that time and been enthroned during those four years and then the abbott of bec came to join him and also um we had here the bishop of aosta and uh at the the mass was sung in latin but also the the mother superior from beck read the gospel in french and it was the kind of service which went on in italian and all of all of those languages were showing our unity across europe at that time and also the ministry of anselm himself and then one year later on the 21st of uh of april stephen brought his family back and carved these two little sconces for candles and i baptized his granddaughter peony here and we remember the family and particularly pianist parents uh easterly and matt on this day and and and uh give thanks for them as friends but all of this is speaking of anselm on this particular and some day and anselm when he became archbishop was a brave archbishop he fought for the rights of the church against some very questionable um kings william ii william rufus as he was called uh who was publicly said to have said he hated the archbishop because the archbishop was always standing against him but uh william rufus having died then henry the first came to be the king here twice anselm was exiled but when he was exiled into europe he still continued to do good work and then finally came back here as the archbishop and his books and his study and all the insistence on the benedictine order are things that we give thanks for at this time and as we look into the glass of this particular window which is shining down on me then to tell the story of this window which again is a modern window and was put in there in 1959 because this chapel was one of the chapels which took the full blast of one of the bombs in the baydeca raid in the second world war when the cathedral itself narrowly missed being destroyed and this window had not been removed it was a victorian window and not 12th century glass at that time and so a new window was created just here and it was done by the uh fine york glacier harry stammers and created to go here and it tells the story of anselm putting characters in his life the two kings on the outer sides william ii and henry the first uh whom he taught and sometimes railed against and sometimes fled from but also then next to him land frank who had been his uh predecessor as archbishop of canterbury and on the other side baldwin who was the monk to whom he gave charge of all the secular affairs in his in his life so that he knew they were in good hands in a in the hands of baldwin that i and he respected baldwin hugely and in the middle here is anselm himself with signs of his life but below his book which tried to explain why god became man took human form in the person of jesus christ so many stories this tells so many things to give thanks for in the life of anselm but the ongoing life of the church the relationship that we have with the benedictine abbey at beck and also the continuity of archbishops as we pray for justin our archbishop who took rowan's place in 2013 and here two archbishops that i had caused to give thanks for and i found no memorial to when i came so when we placed the name anselm in front of this altar speaking of his theology but most of all his call and vocation i caused the names of robert runcie and donald coggan to be placed there too and their families were here on that day when we consecrated this altar and we had much singing and afterwards much hospitality in this place which is a shared place of pilgrimage for christians of all denominations we give thanks for all those things on this day and for the way in which this holy place this chapel of saint anselm speaks to us with its stories and with the things which people have created for it stephen cox went on to create the water stoop that greets pilgrims at the end of the cathedral nave which is a marvelous uh uh place and marvelous objects speaking uh because of the person who donated it of the life of a of an old welsh priest whom we all adored who wasn't much higher than the the font he was in his nineties when he died he was called ferdie phillips and the little plaque says that he welcomed people there loved to welcome people there and now that the the water stoop does that in his place if you like surrounded by the guides and welcomers on ordinary days and we look forward to may the 17th when we can again welcome visitors in a more relaxed way into the cathedral church stephen also created two moralists out in the the herb garden which speak again of another text that god made um [Music] humanity for companionship and the monoliths are facing each other almost in recognition so all those things we give thanks for on this day let's say our prayers then in this particular chapel on this day and i'll go back towards the altar to do exactly that in the morning light so on this day we are thinking of when i'll be the 21st of april we're thinking of the diocese of bondo in the anglican church of kenya and we pray with special prayer for our archbishop justin the present archbishop of canterbury pray for him and his wife caroline as tomorrow they begin their study leave and pray that that will be a time of of rest and reflection which anselm had by way of exile and used it in a wonderful way um for justin it's not exile but it is a very much hard one time to rest and reflect and make plans as well so here is the collect for first of all easter and then after that we'll use the collect for sint anselm's day almighty father who in your great mercy gladden the disciples with the sight of the risen lord give us such knowledge of his presence with us that we may be strengthened and sustained by his risen life and serve you continually in righteousness and truth through jesus christ our lord amen and the colleague for anselm abbott of lebek archbishop of canterbury teacher of the faith who died in 1109 eternal god who gave great gifts to your servant anselm as a pastor and teacher grant that we like him may desire you with our whole heart and so desiring may seek you and seeking may find you through jesus christ our lord amen on this day too we pray for the abbey of beck both communities there and the diocese of ouster and pray for this holy place too we say the prayer our savior taught us in whatever language you like to use our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever are men it's a moment of silence now for our own prayers having prayed for archbishop justin we pray also for those who will carry responsibility during his study leave both here and at lambeth rose bishop of dover and tim bishop at lambeth and the whole aspect of episcopal ministry within the diocese the god of peace who brought again from the dead our lord jesus that great shepherd of the sheep by the blood of the eternal covenants make you perfect in every good work to do his will working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight and the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you upon those whom you love and those whom you would remember today and always amen