If you were to ask what is most memorable about 2022, among the replies you could get would be ‘Well the big anniversary! We are of course talking about our Queen and focusing on this in the first weekend of June. Quite rightly so! I can just remember it as a child of four; we went to the cinema and saw it all in colour! A great deal more exciting than the grey linear television pictures we would have had at home. But I did not understand much, expect that it was an exciting, splendid, and historical occasion and somehow God, and the Archbishop, was there too….

What I did not realise until much later was that this day was an affirmation of what was there already. She had been Queen since her father died in 1952, whilst she and her husband were in Africa. Later I realised that, as a child, Elizabeth had been a member of a special royal family but not ‘in line to the throne’ -whatever that meant – it sounded more like a playground game !

As I grew up this was all a slow revelation to me. One day we went to London to the place where the royal carriages were kept and viewed some of the things I had seen in the film. Now I had seen close up: the carriages, the lovely horses in the stable…! Suddenly it was very shiny and real, not just a picture, even one in colour!

Her Majesty visiting St Asaph Cathedral in 1984

Then in my early teens I met her mother. ‘The Queen Mother’. Well, that is to say in the midst of the vast expanses of the Royal Albert Hall I curtsied and dropped an envelope containing some money into a basked in front of her. It was money from the village MU for some now long-forgotten cause! Much later on, at the 100^th celebration of beginning of the Reader movement, and again in London, Bishop Gregory and I had the privilege of being introduced to Price Phillip. So that’s it – oh, except that I did know someone who had taught the Diana because she lived in the same village as me!  So that is my story….!

Not unreasonably you are by now wondering why I am writing this. It is because I have at last  recognised a much more important link. ‘Hope Together’ has just published a book entitled Our Faithful Queen: 70 years of Faith and Service. In this Catherine Butcher underlines the Queens desire that, ‘short or long, my life, short or long, will be dedicated to your service….’ and asking God to ‘give her wisdom and strength to carry out the solemn promises… that I may faithfully serve all the days of my life.’ This is a diaconal calling, a diaconal ministry springing from a commitment made before God and relying on his strength.

Here lies an interesting link. In 1997 women in the Church in Wales were permitted to be ordained Priest for this first time. In this Diocese there were 17 of us. That was absolutely great, so exciting: on one level unexpected and on another long hoped for. So it was that, very unusually, two ordination services took place on the weekend of 11 and 12 January 1997 – now 25 years ago! And the common factor in all this – the ongoing nature is still basically Diaconal. As priests we can now do more, different, privileged if sometimes challenging things. But we too are still deacons, and our service, like that of the Queen, is basically diaconal. It is costly:  a lifelong calling, the call sometimes modified by circumstances. There when we are in public, there when we struggle to understand or to face into problems thrown at us. Diaconal in the way we treat others. Thus our calling is greater than we imagined when, as younger people, we set out on this journey. It will be there until the end. The Queen too may have cut down and shared her duties but she has not retired: she serves.

Celebrating 20 years of women’s ordination in the Church in Wales

My feeling is that now is time we rediscovered the nature and meaning of that word ‘Diaconate’ afresh. Not as something we are ‘stuck in’, or is ‘just form a year’. Some of us had 10 or more years to explore it, but this did not actually end in January ’97. Rather it is ongoing and in many ways I now see ‘retirement’ as being even more diaconal. And, most importantly, I am reminded of the words of Jesus, who ‘did not come to be served, but to serve….’ Matthew 20:28

So as we very rightly give thanks to God for ‘our Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth’ this June, let us also thank God for her understanding of Diaconal service, and let us follow her example, as she continues to seek to follow Christ in her own, unique but obedient diaconal ministry. Meanwhile we thank God too in this 25^th year that women are, without a second thought, able to be ordained Priest. This is indeed something well worth celebrating! But what we need to understand is that none of us, old or young, female or male, royal or otherwise, leaves diaconal service behind.

A phrase I have heard Bishop Gregory use many times springs to mind: ‘And so for this, thanks be to God!’

Those ordained on Saturday 11 January in 1997 with the Archbishop of Wales who was also the Bishop of St Asaph, Alwyn Rice-Jones.

Those ordained Priest by Archbishop Alwyn on 11^th and 12^th January 1997 were: Jean Baker, Sally Brush, Heather Fenton, Sue Huyton, Valerie Jones, Janet Jennings, Gillian Marshall, Jean Rock and Margaret Harvey, and on Sunday Mair Jones, Anne Pitt, Katheryn Southerton, Marjorie Quinn, Jean Stephens, Pauline Walker and Marion Graham.

This is the full version of an article published in the Summer 2022 edition of Teulu Asaph on page 11.