91Èȱ¬

A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Canon Stephen Shipley

Good morning.

There are certain dates which always remain etched in the memory. Their very abbreviation evokes a day of high emotion. D-day – 6th June 1944 – is one of them - a day when the armed forces of many nations, led by the United Kingdom and the United States of America crossed the Channel to reach the Normandy beaches in order to rid this continent of a great evil.

D-day had been many months in the planning. It had involved hundreds of thousands of people. To this day it is still one of the largest single military operations in history. On the Sunday before D-day, the then Bishop of Southwark declared that we stood on the threshold of events by which, under God, will decide for good or ill the course of future centuries. And so it was that at 9.32 on the morning of 6th June in 1944, the 91Èȱ¬ broke into its programme with the news the world had been waiting for: the Normandy landings had begun.

I last visited those beaches and some of the eighteen military cemeteries nearby on the 60th anniversary of D-day in 2004. We broadcast the memorial service from the largest of those cemeteries at Bayeux, the first French town to be liberated from the Germans. Her Majesty the Queen and Presidents Chirac and Bush were in attendance together with hundreds of veterans. Today’s commemorations will be on a much smaller scale, due particularly to the corona-virus pandemic, but that will not diminish our honouring the bravery and sacrifice of those who served.

Lord, grant us similar courage to recognise and restrain evil in our own day, and may those who lead the nations of the world work together to defend human liberty,that we may live peaceably one with another.

Amen.