[Cet] Rogation Days

[Robert Waldrop]

I received this note today from the National
Catholic Rural Life folks, in their regular email:

"Although Rogation Days are celebrated at various
times around the world, typically in the northern
hemisphere they are celebrated the three days
preceding Ascension Thursday. "On Rogation and
Ember Days the practice of the church is to offer
prayers to the Lord for the needs of all people,
especially for the productivity of the earth and
for human labor, and to give God public thanks."
(General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the
Calendar, #45.)  Visit
http://www.ncrlc.com/Rogation-Days-SC.html for a
related ancient practice called Beating the
Bounds. Begin planning Rogation Days observance
now for next year by ordering NCRLC "Rogation
Days": Services for community, feasting,
processions, blessings, or family celebrations for
only $5 plus handling and shipping."

The NCRLC has a prayerbook at
http://www.ncrlc.com/The-Rural-Life-Prayerbook.html .

The original 1950s era Catholic Rural Life
Prayerbook may be found online at
http://www.ewtn.com/library/PRAYER/RLPRAYBK.TXT .

The Rogation Days are April 25th, and then the 3
days before Ascension.  Traditionally processions
were held on these days and the Litany of the
Saints was sung to ask God's blessings upon the
planting and growing seasons and the crops.
Also, the feast of Sts. Isidore and Maria is on
May 15th.

It seems to me that renewing the celebration of
Rogation Days would be a good idea for those of us
concerned about rural life, agrarianism, and
Christian stewardship of Creation.

Robert Waldrop, Oscar Romero Catholic Worker
House, OKC
www.justpeace.org

Here is what the Rural Life prayerbook says about
Rogation days.

CEREMONIES FOR THE OBSERVANCE OF THE ROGATION DAYS

Through Soil Stewardship Week, we try
. . . to move ourselves to penance for sins
against our good God;
. . . to arouse our confidence and trust in God's
providence;
. . . to acknowledge publicly our dependence on
God;
. . . to ask God for a plentiful harvest;
. . . to thank God publicly for His bounty to us;
. . . to show publicly our faith, hope, and love
of God;
. . . to realize that only through living
according to God's will and
commandments may the individual, the family, the
community, the state, the
nation, the world, have a happy, contented, and
peaceful existence.

On four days of the year a procession should be
made while the Litanies of
the Saints are sung, to beg the blessing of God on
the fruits of the earth.

The twenty-fifth day of April was a day sacred, in
ancient times, to the
gods of pagan Rome. But the Church set this day
apart as a day of special
prayer to avert God's anger, and to beg His
blessing on the labors of the
year. The Litany of the Saints was sung in
procession. St. Gregory the
Great, in the year 600, obtained on this day the
miraculous end of a
terrible pestilence which was devastating Rome.
>From that time, the custom
of chanting the Litany of the Saints in procession
on the feast of St. Mark
soon spread through the whole of Europe.

The word "rogation" comes from the Latin word
"rogare" meaning "to ask."
The three Rogation Days are over 1,500 years old.
They began in the fifth
century at Vienne, France, when, in the year 470,
there had been crop
failures--due to earthquakes and bad weather--with
resulting great food
scarcity and destitution. St. Mamertus, bishop of
Vienne, ordered a triduum
of prayer and penance on the three days preceding
the Ascension. The clergy
and the people made penitential processions
calling upon God to help and
asking the intercession of His saints.

Other communities took up the custom and from
France it soon spread
throughout the world. At the end of the eighth
century, Pope St. Leo III
introduced the practice into the universal Church.
Thus, it has become a
tradition in the Church that each year on the
feast of St. Mark, April 25,
and on the three days before Ascension a special
Rogation Days' service is
held.

The purpose of the Rogation Days' service is to
implore the mercy of God
that He may keep us from all evils of soul and
body, and give to the plants
of the field an increase. In the spring, when the
fields are becoming green
and there is promise of a good harvest--but also
the possibility of
destruction through frost, hail, or
rainstorms--the prayers and processions
are a reminder to feeble man to turn with humility
and confidence to the
Giver of all good. For, it is not the earth alone
which brings forth fruit,
and not alone the busy hand of man on which the
increase depends; but it is
God who gives the increase.

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