National online service for Remembrance Sunday to draw on themes of compassion and reconciliation

This Sunday will see the Church of England’s national online service broadcast from the Fusiliers Chapel at St Sepulchre’s Church in Holborn, London. 

The service for Remembrance Sunday will highlight the importance of compassion, understanding and reconciliation, in relation to friends, family and communities both local and further afield. 

This service will contain an act of remembrance, including the Last Post and a period of silence with footage of poppies outside Westminster Abbey.

The service is led by the Rev Nick Mottershead who is Priest in Charge at Holy Sepulchre and Chaplain to the Royal Fusiliers. It will include prayers for the fallen, and for world peace, led by Mick McCarthy Major (Retd) MBE.

Familiar texts used during the service will include extracts from Laurence Binyon’s For The Fallen - “They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old; Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn; At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, We will remember them.” It will also include the Kohima Epitaph: “When you go home, tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow, we gave our today.”

The Reverend Mottershead will say: "We gather as a community on this Remembrance Sunday to remember the sacrifices made, and will do all we can to learn the lessons of war and conflict. 

“We will do all we can to encourage a future filled with compassion, understanding and unity, praying for reconciliation in God's name in all conflicts.”

Music for the service is supported by the Choral Scholars of St Martin-in-the-Fields, including the hymn perhaps most frequently associated with Remembrance: O God our help in ages past. 

In 1950 the south aisle at Holy Sepulchre was adapted to become the Memorial Chapel of the Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment), which was founded in 1685 in the Tower of London. The Bible reading is by Sebastian Fox, Chair of the Royal Fusiliers Chapel Committee.

The service will be available to watch on YouTube and Facebook at 9am Sunday 12 November. Other Church of England online services this year have come from cathedrals, housing estates, rural churches and even an RNLI Lifeboat.