Rowan Williams: My vision of the Church of England

From the Archbishop of Canterbury's enthronement sermon, at Canterbury Cathedral

It is a time to reflect all about the character of the ministry that I'm taking on; but I find that it's not possible to think how I can minister the living bread of Christ unless I first seek to become clearer about what I long to see in the Church in which I shall be ministering. So the most significant question I can ask myself is: "What do I pray for in the Church of the future?"

Confidence; courage; an imagination set on fire by the vision of God the Holy Trinity; thankfulness. The Church of the future, I believe, will do both its prophetic and its pastoral work effectively only if it is concerned first with gratitude and joy – orthodoxy flows from this, and not the other way around, and we do not solve our deepest problems just by better discipline but by better discipleship, a fuller entry into the intimate joy of Jesus's life.

When we have become more honest about our hunger and our loss, we shall have a fuller awareness of what that joy is; and as that joy matures, we shall have a fuller sense of the depth of our need.

About 12 years ago, I was visiting an Orthodox monastery and was taken to see one of the smaller and older chapels. It was a place intensely full of the memory and reality of prayer. The monk showing me around pulled the curtain from in front of the sanctuary, and inside was a plain altar and one simple picture of Jesus, darkened and rather undistinguished.

But for some reason at that moment it was as if the veil of the Temple was torn in two: I saw as I had never seen the simple fact of Jesus at the heart of all our words and worship, behind the curtain of our anxieties and our theories, our struggles and our suspicion. Simply there; nothing anyone can do about it, there he is as he has promised to be till the world's end.