George Herbert outlined these three aims in the observance of Rogation Days.
I’d like to highlight three more reasons why Anglicans should observe Rogation Days in our time.
Adam and Eve weren’t alone suffering a curse from sin. The earth was subjected to futility, too. Creation may be broken, but creation cries out for redemption (Romans 8.18-23). Just as Christ freed us from our sins by his death and resurrection, so his good creation will be set free from its own thorns and thistles to become what he intended her to be.
Rogation Days call us to participate in that work of redemption. And the Rogation procession is an enacted liturgy calling us to embrace our role in cultivating and preparing God’s world for the return of Jesus.
Rogation Days also ground us in the parish where we live and worship. No matter how far and wide technology might take us on our devices, you cannot be everywhere. You don’t live just anywhere either. If you have been baptized in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, you prepare for God’s new creation of heaven and earth somewhere.
This somewhere is the place of your sojourn to the New Jerusalem. This is the parish where you live and worship. As Wendell Berry said, “No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in it only by living responsibly in some small part of it.”
Rogation Days encourage us to deepen our roots in the parish where we live and worship.
I find it both wonderful and wise that the Church summons us to worship on Rogation Days in the same week we celebrate the Ascension of Jesus into heaven. We’re asking heaven to come to earth even as earth—in the risen body of Jesus—ascends to heaven.
