Passing of an Era

Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, 1926-2022
Rest in Peace

In paradisum deducant te Angeli;
In tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres,
Et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem.
Chorus angelorum te suscipiat,
Et cum Lazaro quondam paupere,
Aeternam habeas requiem.

May the angels lead you into paradise;

May the martyrs receive you at your arrival,
And lead you to the holy city Jerusalem.
May the choirs of angels receive you,
And with Lazarus, once poor,
May you have eternal rest.

(Closing prayer of the Mass of Christian Burial)

She has been queen for all of the second half of the twentieth century and the first two decades of the twenty-first century.  That is an amazing length of time!  I was 5 years old in the year of her coronation and was vividly aware of it.  Although a New Yorker by birth, my parents were born as subjects of the English crown in what became, during the reigns of her grandfather and father, the Republic of Ireland.  But the ties are deep, even if the politics are different.

We listened to the coronation ceremony on the radio (very few people had TVs in 1953).  And later in the year my mother's sister returned from a visit to our family in Ireland and England laden with the kinds of souvenirs these events generate.  I still have many of them.  

With most of the world I have followed the highs and lows of the Royal Family through the years.  It hasn't always been edifying, but through it all the Queen has moved with dignity and grace.  Well done, ma'am!

I find it interesting that her death has occurred on the feast day of another, greater Queen.  September 8 is the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary.   May the soul of Elizabeth II be granted the grace to enter into the heavenly court of that greater Queen.

The Queen is dead.  Long live the King!  I understand that Charles will keep his baptismal name and so becomes King Charles III.  As a student of the seventeenth century, this pleases me.  Charles I and Charles II were interesting kings, for very different reasons.  I hope their successor of the name will, however, have a happier reign their either of them.