I’ve been thinking about the way the two minutes’ silence has changed in my lifetime. My recollection is that through the 1970s and 1980s it fell into disuse and that even Remembrance Day services on the second Sunday of November became less well attended. Through the 1990s and to the present day it seems that people have given it increasing significance.
It may be that the period of my teens and twenties saw us wanting to look forward to a new future rather than back to the devastations of war. Fewer of us were connected through family to the dead and wounded of the great conflicts, and even the Cold War was consigned to history. But then came the conflicts in the Middle East and increasing international tensions. After Iraq and Afghanistan new names began to be added to the old ones on memorials around the country. Perhaps this fuelled peoples’ desire to stand, stop, be still, and remember.
In The Times in early November 1919 King George requested that:
‘… at the hour when the Armistice came into force, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, there may be for the brief space of two minutes a complete suspension of all our normal activities. During that time… all work, all sound and all locomotion should cease,… so that in perfect stillness, the thoughts of everyone may be concentrated on reverent remembrance of the Glorious Dead .
“The hush… is not solely an act of remembrance; it is also a moment of dedication, when those who still live undertake to be worthy of those who died, and an affirmation of unusual national unity.”
This year the observance will be on Remembrance Sunday itself, and is the centenary of the Armistice. “Armistice” became “Remembrance” after the Second World War, and people’s poppies will be worn in memory of those who have died in many conflicts, of which the First World War looms largest. In Hampstead we have many opportunities to do what King George suggested: to remember, to dedicate ourselves to lives worthy of such sacrifice, to join together when much tends towards division, and to seek a world where cooperation and collaboration are more powerful than violence and oppression.
There are concerts, services and times for reflection this month. Much of our music will come from different settings of the Requiem Mass. Unafraid to gaze at the full horror and challenge of death, and acknowledging what it is to fear and cry out in anguish, the Requiem is founded on, and threaded through with, hope. The earnest cry that the dead be given rest and that they should be bathed in perpetual light is no sentimental wish but is enfolded in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
When we are silent we will call to mind the utter destruction of war and the loss of life on an intimate and industrial scale. As we do we will recall the one perfect and sufficient sacrifice of Christ, and hold fast to the sure and certain hope of rest with God after death, and being raised to life in Christ. In that hope may we dedicate ourselves to live lives worthy of that sacrifice, pointing to the Kingdom of Heaven and revealing it in all we do.