The Archbishop of York has opened up about the loss of a godchild in his Shrove Tuesday message.
Most Rev Stephen Cottrell said that the snowdrops of early spring cause him to reflect on the “beautiful, fragile and strong” gift of life, and its brevity.
“Thirty years ago, my one-year-old godson died in a hospice near Oxford,” he told BBC Radio 2’s Pause for Thought. “It was this time of year. I took his funeral.”
“The Sisters who ran the hospice put snowdrops on his little coffin. Somehow they spoke more eloquently than anything else of his little life, so short, so tragically ended, but also so very beautiful,” Archbishop Stephen said. “Our lives begin. And our lives end. Each is beautiful, and in its own way miraculous.”
He encouraged people, regardless of their faith, to “consider our ending and our beginning,” and to “look forward to the abundance of spring, and, for those of us who follow Jesus, the abundance of life that his dying and rising bring to the world.”
"If you can," he added, "find time to look at snowdrops. If there are none growing near you, I'm lucky there are hundreds near me, there must be some sort of snowdrop.com on the web where you can ponder their fragile beauty online - and then the fragile beauty of every life."