When you have been married for 60 years, which few of us have, perhaps you don’t feel the need to do the touchy-feely-smiley eye-contact stuff any more. Love and companionship travel through the deep roots rather than the waving branches.

And perhaps, when you have endured a marriage conducted relentlessly in the public gaze, you reserve the intimacies, however small, for your treasured moments of privacy. They are rare enough.

During an hour-long service to celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary, in the same Westminster Abbey in which they were married amid the grey, postwar austerity of 1947, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh did not look at each other; there was no exchange of surprised, “Crikey, we’ve made it” glances.

In a white wool coat and matching hat, and bespectacled throughout, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England paid close attention to her order of service, putting it down only during the singing of the 23rd Psalm, which was performed at her wedding to the then unfamiliar but by now near-universal Scottish tune of Crimond; she clearly knows the words by heart.

Prince Philip, by contrast, kept the words open in front of him. As Dr Rowan Williams, the Supreme Governor’s highest priest on this Earth, delivered his address from the Abbey’s tall pulpit, the Duke wore one of his favourite slightly bemused expressions, as though not entirely believing that he was being preached to by a wildly bearded archdruid. The Queen fixed the Archbishop with a steady gaze, drinking in his every word.

The Primate of All England, whose sermons sometimes seem as focused as a gas cloud in a distant nebula, was on much sharper form than usual, given that he had something utterly specific to talk about: the longstanding marriage of two individuals.

“Every marriage is an act of faith. When you think about it, the promise to be in the company of the same person for a lifetime is an extraordinary thing to undertake,” the Archbishop said. It was deeply mysterious and never free of risk.

Marriage was a relationship that said something profound and exhilarating about humanity; it was a sign of what God thought about the capacity of humanity. He then got down to the specific marriage that he had been summoned to talk about.

“Every marriage is a public event, but some couples have to live more than others in the full light of publicity; we are probably aware more than ever these days of the pressures this brings,” Dr Williams said.

“But it also means that we can give special thanks for the very public character of the witness and the sign offered to us by this marriage, and what it has meant to nation and Commonwealth over the decades. And part of what it has meant has had to do precisely with the sense of unqualified commitment that has been so characteristic of every aspect of this reign.”

Dr Williams continued: “Today we celebrate not only a marriage but the relationship between monarch and people of which also that marriage is a symbol: a relationship in which we see what levels of commitment are possible for someone upheld by a clear sense of God’s calling and enabling.”

Dr Williams concluded: “In the lives of the couple with whom today we join in celebration, that bracing, renewing and hopeful vision of faithful generosity has been for 60 years set so clearly before our eyes. May it be so for many more years.”

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