How many of you will celebrate Rogation Sunday today, or the three Rogation Days this week? How many of you wonder what on earth a Rogation Day is? Go look it up on Wikipedia.
OK, that was unhelpful. Just letting out my little smarty-mouth for a minute. But seriously: go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogation_days for an exhaustive treatment.
Rogation Days are the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday before Ascension Day. Since most of us don’t go to the church during the week, the Sixth Sunday in Easter is sometimes celebrated as Rogation Sunday. Rogation comes from the Latin “rogare,” to pray. For Anglicans, it is a time to bless the fields, bless the parish, bless ministries.
When I lived with the Community of St. John Baptist in New Jersey, we celebrated Rogation by walking around the grounds, singing, with incense and holy water. We blessed the convent; the retreat house; the labyrinth; the employees’ houses; the former school that is now a drug treatment center; we blessed the animals that lived there. We prayed that all these would be sites of meaningful ministry, that people would find God through these venues and people. It was a very powerful time for me. When I served a parish, I instituted the practice there.
Since moving up here I haven’t celebrated Rogation. The brothers don’t do it. But this year I’m going for it. Our house is a center for ministry as well as prayer and daily life. We need all the prayers we can get! We need prayers: for cleaning, for gardening, for the river that runs through our basement and the animals living in our walls.
Holy water - check.
Incense - check.
Songs - check.
Prayers - check.
What will you do? If you don’t have holy water, or don’t believe in blessing water, just say a prayer. Pray to be a center of peace, a center of life and growth, a sign of God in a world desperate for God. Pet your animals, tend your plants, start a compost pile. Recycle something you would normally throw out. Give thanks for creation. Amen!
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