May 9 – Let Every Preparation Be Made

We have “stitched” those we love into the fabric of our raiment, and if we have not yet made a list of those we bear upon our hearts, as we look into the rudiments of coronation, we know that they are embroidered upon our hearts.

There are those for whom we have been given responsibility and spiritual oversight, born of LOVE. Some we love and from them receive love in return; some we love and our every kindness is rebuffed, but we love anyway. Some we would rather not love, but love compels us.

So it was with Elizabeth II, and so has she lived. In recent years she has made tremendous inroads toward reconciliation with Ireland, which means she has had to care for a people whose rebels have murdered several within the scope of her family and friends. Clearly, she has maintained a love for Ireland, to her great credit. (When she traveled there, she wore green every day . . . not her best color, as one of her staff once told her, but she loved the Irish more than her ensemble.)

Day by day, as around the world her peoples live to carve out good and prosperous lives, she lives for them. She makes decisions based upon their well-being. She is not a political figure; she is a monarch, and she is the true sovereign, who lives that her people may be ever safe, content in their homes and their lives, and able to provide for their families and pursue fulfillment in their temporal and spiritual lives.

In the Spring of 1952, Elizabeth’s Coronation Day was still a year away. She practiced maneuvering her long train by pinning bed sheets together, and as we have seen, she practiced wearing the heavy St. Edward’s crown. She was also given a sort of coronation devotional by the Archbishop, and she studied the text and Scriptures assiduously before the event. Let’s look, in preparation of our own better understanding, at the words he would speak when the crown was placed upon her head, for we too bear a royal responsibility.
“God crown you with a crown of glory and righteousness, that having a right faith and manifold fruit of good works, you may obtain the crown of an everlasting kingdom by the gift of Him whose kingdom endureth forever.”


The Ancient Iron Crown of Lombardy
by permission, James Steakley