Rogation Sunday

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The Anglican Book of Homilies, in ‘The Sermon concerning Prayer,’ begins thus: “There is nothing in all man’s life, well beloved in our Savior Christ, so needful spoken of, and daily called upon, as hearty, zealous, and devout prayer, the necessity whereof is so great that without it nothing may be well obtained at GOD’s hand. For as the Apostle James saith: ‘Every good and perfect gift cometh from above, and proceedeth from the Father of lights.’”¹ – The Anglican Divines inform us that our hearty, zealous, and devout prayers are not spoken into the great void of darkness in the heavens, but having received the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior (cf. Tit. 3.6), we speak directly into the ear and heart of ALMIGHTY GOD, if we speak in the Name of JESUS. This is exactly what JESUS says in the Upper Room, surrounded by His disciples: “Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full … Whatsoever you ask the Father in my name, He will give it you” (St. John 16.24; 23). – As Christ-followers, we have been granted the distinct privilege of speaking to GOD the Father in the Name of JESUS Christ, both in our private and corporate prayers. Though the words of our prayers might in some way become rote (for we say them so frequently), we should not imagine they are equally rote in GOD the Father’s ears. We should always keep in our mind’s eye, and rooted deeply in our understanding, that when we come to the Father, He hears us in the Name of His Son, and He sees us as He sees the Son. 

We are not JESUS’ representatives in this world only. We are also members of His very Body; He in us and we in Him. This is why the Father sees JESUS in us and hears Him when we speak. – This cojoining with Christ results from the nuptial/marital union of JESUS with His Church; our consummation is realized when the Church’s individual members are engrafted into Him – like olive branches into an olive vine – He the Royal Head, and we the Body. For, “by faith we live in Christ and He in us, and this is not figurative, but substantial and effectual, so that from this union we receive eternal life.”² And that life is in the Son, nourishing the Church so that she expresses true religion, via prayer, praise, and the promotion of peace. Our union with Christ is relational (cf. Jhn. 15.7); it begins with trust (cf. Jhn. 5.24); progresses to spiritual regeneration through participation in Christ’s death and resurrection (cf. Col. 2.9-12); then to obedience to JESUS’ commands (1 Jhn 2.6); and finally to a richer and richer intimacy, as we feed on His Body and Blood, having our love in union with our LORD, strengthened and deepened each time we gather together and feast at His Table. (cf. Jhn. 6.53-56) 

Thus, GOD interacts with us, not as strangers, certainly, but more importantly, not even as we and others might see ourselves. When JESUS tells His disciples in the Upper Room, “Until now, you have asked nothing in my Name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full”, JESUS had already washed the feet of His friends. Before JESUS gives His disciples the authority to approach the Father in His Name, He had said to them: “Ye are clean, every whit” (St. John 13.10). Thus, as clean, justified, sanctified, and glorified sons and daughters of the Household of GOD (being brought into a unique heavenly dignity, through the cleansing by the washing of water with the Word), we have been invested with the robe and ring of restored sonship. – So, as the author of Hebrews writes unto those of us who cannot be deeply unaffected by this newfound spiritual identity and reality bestowed upon us in and through Christ: “Let us, therefore, come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (4.16), in JESUS’ Name. 

With the privilege of coming into the Throne Room of GOD as newly begotten sons and daughters to make our supplications unto Him, we must first recognize the great responsibility of this virtue given unto us. Praying in Christ’s Name, we must also pray in the spirit and ethos of the Son of GOD. And of JESUS’ ethos, we can be confident by the Word he spake. Christ’s ethos, that is His habitual character and good disposition, was a direct reflection of the character of His Father. As He Himself said, “And he who sees Me sees Him who sent Me” (St. John 12.45). – The Apostolic Record is also replete with this testimony. In it we read, “JESUS is the image of the invisible GOD, the firstborn over all creation,” and in another place, JESUS “who being the brightness of the Father’s glory and the express image of His person, upholds all things by the word of His power … [now sitting] down at the right hand of the Majesty on high…” (Colossians 1.15; Hebrews 1.3). – And that express Image of the Father, as we each have experienced, is gentle and lowly (humble) in heart. – Thus, to take up the Name of Christ, and be seen as He is by the Father, and to boldly trust that our hearty, zealous, and devout supplications will be obtained at GOD’s hand through prayer, we must clothe ourselves with the same habitual character and good disposition as the LORD JESUS Christ did. The Apostle Paul, exhorting Christ’s disciples in Philippi, instructed his apprentice bishop, Titus, “[to remind the LORD’s followers] to be subject to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing all humility to all men … Being worrisome for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your prayers be made known unto GOD” (3.1-2; 4.6), as Christ Himself did; meekly, lowly, and humbly. 

Thus, adoring ourselves with JESUS’ Name, character, and demeanor, we are not to think ourselves too highly religious. To check this attitude, JESUS tells His disciples something that the ‘young’ Christian might misinterpret, but that which the ‘mature’ Christian should not. He says, “Whatsoever you ask the Father in my name, He will give it you” (St. John 16.23). – JESUS is not giving His disciples permission to pray in His Name, unto the Father, for every whimsical and fleeting thing that stimulates our urges and craven wishes. – There are many things, small and great, that GOD does desire us to bring to Him in prayer, trusting that He cares and will provide for our physical and spiritual needs. Yet, for the fleshly and temporal thing, He cannot be bothered. – As a general rule, the Anglican Divines have set out two rules for us to follow when we pray in JESUS’ Name to the Father. First, for our own necessity – inwardly to the soul and outwardly to the body; second, for the glory and honor of GOD. 

Since the soul of man is most precious unto GOD, “Therefore, we ought first of all to crave such things as properly belong to the salvation thereof: the gift of repentance – the gift of faith – the gift of charity, good works, and remission and forgiveness of sins – to patience in adversity – lowliness in prosperity – and such other like fruits of the Spirit, as hope, love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, meekness, and temperance. (cf. Gal. 5.22-23) … And when we have sufficiently prayed for these things belonging to the soul, then may we lawfully and with safe conscience pray also for our bodily necessities, such things as meat, drink, clothing, health of body, deliverance from persecution, favor in our daily affairs, and so forth, according to our daily need.”³ 

But we must never ever forget, nor make request in JESUS’ Name, even if we have attained the highest religious temperament, or form of it, if we be not mindful first of this most important thing; “Namely, the glory of GOD. Which, unless we mind seriously, and set before our eyes always to uphold, we may not look to be heard or to receive anything of the LORD. If our prayers measure not up to, nor abide by this most excellent standard, which Christ JESUS hath made, then our words of prayer are not even worth an utterance, lest they be uttered with the spirit and mind of: Not my will, but Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.”⁴ “GOD has a will with and for us, and it must become the measure of our willing and being; viz.,  the driving force of our prayers.”⁵  

It was for the endowment of GOD’s blessings that this Feast Day of Rogation was originally formulated; to ask for GOD’s blessing upon soul and body, in JESUS’ Name. – In 470 A.D., in Vienne, France, after a series of natural disasters, with the suffering of many people and the loss of much property, a gathering was called by then Archbishop Mamertus. The bishop “proclaimed a fast and ordered that litanies and prayers be said as the people of the city processed around their fields, asking GOD’s protection and blessing on the crops that were just beginning to sprout … At that time, the people’s spiritual and physical well-being was closely connected to the soil, and they were highly vulnerable to the uncertainties [and whimsical nature of the] creation.”⁶ Thus, the people asked of GOD, in JESUS’ Name, that which was for their good, as well for the body as the soul, and the custom spread throughout the rest of Europe unto England, under the auspices of the ‘feast of asking’, which in Latin is ‘rogare’ – thus, Rogation Sunday. 

It is GOD alone, sayeth the Psalmist, who “visitest the earth, and blesses it; making it very plenteous. He alone crowns the year with His goodness; making His clouds drop with fatness” (65.9, 12). Thus, the Feast of Rogation also came to include another custom, and that was to process around the bounds of the parish church, along with one’s homestead, while asking for GOD’s blessing, protection, and mercy. The ‘customary’ of the Rogation Procession grew to include the identification of key boundary stones, fence posts, or trees that defined the people’s property. The younger generations would be made to know those boundaries, first, to provoke a public, generational memory of record as to the scope of each family’s owned-property boundary, and second, to push back with the public witness, upon any encroachment by one’s neighbors. And if any encroachment had occurred, it was upon the Feast of Rogation that neighbors would reconcile their differences of encroachment, restoring unity, peace, and concord in the community to the glory of GOD and to the virtuous witness of the visible Church’s adherence to the Royal Law of Liberty. 

Thus, this custom of Rogation, as Christ JESUS has commanded, and as our brothers and sisters in the historic Church have practiced, we continue this tradition of ‘rogare’ – the asking of GOD for His many blessings of provision and protection in JESUS’ Name. Such an observation is no less needful today, as it was in antiquity, for nature is no less whimsical nor temperamental; nor are our lives less fraught with needs that only the LORD GOD can assuage. The only difference between then and now is that we are no longer an agrarian society, and the parish church exists in a different context in twenty-first-century America than it did in medieval England. Yet, this illustrative imagery should not be lost on us. The LORD JESUS compares the life of the Church and her members to soils that need dunging, ground that needs tilling, seeds that need planting and watering, branches that need pruning, and fields that need harvesting. And though our life’s most valuable possessions are no longer marked by stones, posts, and trees, our hearts’ boundaries do have their defining demarcations. Those demarcations – spiritual, psychological, and interpersonal – are still prone to encroachment by our neighbors’ coarse words, impolite actions, and irreverent attitudes. And though we have not any terra firma to traverse upon as we sing hymns and pray the litanies, we do have the ability, by the Spirit of GOD, to process the bounds of our hearts, beating out the noble boundaries set therein upon the day of our Baptism. And if we do find there in our heart’s memory, encroachment by neighbors or family members, we can also mend fences with those who have hurt us – setting clear and godly expectations for future relationships, in JESUS’ Name. 

To ‘beat the bounds’ as it is known, and to perform the rite of ‘rogare’ unto the LORD, is a good and faithful act by the Church, if only we will abide by St. James’ exhortation to look into the perfect law of liberty and continue therein; being not forgetful hearers only, but being doers of this Rogation Sunday work with unfettered love of GOD and neighbor. If we shall so do, then shall we be blessed in our deeds (cf. 1.25). 

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Nowell’s Anglican Catechism of 1570: 

Catechist to Catechumen * Declare with what confidence, we wretched mortal men, that are in so many ways unworthy, ought to call upon the immortal GOD? 

– We come to Him in the Name, and in the trust of Christ our Mediator, by Whom, the door being opened to us, we shall not be forbidden to enter, nor have hard access to the majesty of GOD, and to the obtaining of His favor. 

* Now tell me with what affection of heart we must come unto Him? 

– Our hearts must be sore grieved with feelings of our need and spiritual poverty, and the miseries that oppress us, so far forth that we must burn with great desire of deliverance from that grief, and of GOD’s help, which we pray for. 

* Is it lawful to ask of GOD whatsoever cometh unto our mind and mouth? 

– GOD forbid that we Christians should ever ask anything of GOD in prayer that may mislike the mind and will of GOD against us.⁷ 

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On this Rogation Sunday, may the LORD GOD, from whom all good things do come; Grant to us His humble servants, that by His holy inspiration, we may think those things that are good, and by His merciful guiding, may perform the same. Even those things that reflect the good disposition and enduring character of Christ JESUS. And in so doing, may GOD the Holy Spirit bless the boundaries of our hearts with sound living, true virtue, and fruitful relationships, in the Name of JESUS, to the glory of GOD the Father. Amen. 

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1 Church of England, The Anglican Book of Homilies, (New York: T. and J. Swords, 1815), 268.  
2 Mascall, E.L., The Recovery of Unity: A Theological Approach, (London: Longmans Green, 1959), 54-55.  
3 Anglican Divines, The Anglican Book of Homilies, (London: The Prayer Book and Homily Society, 1852), 305-306.  
4 Anglican Divines, 307.  
5 Ratzinger, Joseph, JESUS of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, (New York: Double Day, 2007), 147. 

6 St.Benedictanglican.com. “Rogation Sunday.” Accessed 8 May 2026. https://stbenedictanglican.com  
7 Anglican Divines, 312.