Rogation Sunday

Easter V: Rogation Sunday
May 25, 2025
 
These things have I spoken unto you, that in my ye might
have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation but be of good cheer;
 I have overcome the world.
 (St. John xvi. 33) 
 

Today, we find ourselves on the Fifth and final Sunday of the Easter Season. Today is called Rogation Sunday because our English word is derived from the Latin word rogare, which means to petition, ask, or supplicate. The tradition of Rogation Sunday hails from the 4th century and was standardized in the Latin Church by Pope Gregory in the 6th century. It was originally a Roman festival called Robigalia, which comes from robigo – meaning wheat rust, a grain disease, against which pious pagans petitioned the gods by sacrificing a dog to protect their fields. In England, on Rogation Sunday clergymen and their flocks process around the parish boundaries to bless the crops and pray for a fruitful harvest.

But the original purpose of Rogation Sunday goes back to Jesus’ opening words in today’s Gospel: Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it you. (St. John xvi.) Jesus’ words follow the prophecy of His eventual Ascension back to the Father, where He says, In that day, ye shall ask me nothing. (Ibid, 23) Jesus was preparing His Disciples for His risen and ascended life that He would share with them. Its blessing and benefit, as we learned last week, would depend upon the coming of the Holy Spirit. Jesus teaches us today that we must ask the Father in the Name of Jesus for the Holy Spirit. This is why we end every prayer with through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Again, Jesus says, Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. (Ibid, 24) Notice that we are encouraged to ask for full joy. (Idem) Eastertide is all about learning to ask for what shall fill our hearts with joy. God forever longs to share this joy with us, and it comes in Eastertide as we embrace resurrection from sin, death, and Satan. To begin to obtain that joy, we must set our sights on those things which are above and not things of the earth. (Col. iii. 2) In heart and mind, we must follow Jesus home to Heaven to find eternal joy.

But what is this joy? Christian joy is found in the life of Jesus Christ, which begins and ends with God the Father. Christian joy comes down from Heaven in Jesus Christ, redeems human nature in Jesus Christ, and returns human life to the Father. True joy is found first in knowledge. In Jesus Christ, we can come to know ourselves truly as creatures who depend upon God and derive the truth about ourselves from God. True joy is found second when we love this truth and will it in our lives. So, what we come to know about true human life in Jesus Christ, we will by imitation of Him. True joy is not found primarily in bodily health, temporal happiness, or earthly success. True joy is found by the perfection of our souls. True joy is found in becoming sons of the Father who are made to do His will. Christ, of course, is the eternally-begotten Word, the Son and offspring of the Father’s will. By His Redemption of our fallen human nature, Jesus invites us once again to become God’s sons through Him.

To find true joy, we must follow Christ in spirit and in truth as He returns to the Father. To get into right relation with the Father, we must ascend with Him that where He is, there we might be also. (St. John xiv. 3) If we shall ascend, we must ask the Father to help us live through Jesus Christ under the rule of the Spirit they share. Herein alone, we shall find true joy. For this to happen, we must make time and space for silent contemplation. Stillness and quiet are necessary to first situate us in right relation to God. In stillness and quiet, we must study the life of Christ to discern what moved Him. Christ was always moved by the Father. I came forth from the Father. (Ibid, 28) St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that He says this for three reasons: (1) That He might manifest the Father in the world: ‘No man hath seen God at any time; the Only Begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.’ (St. John i. 18) The Word and Son of God came into the world to reveal the Father to fallen man. (2) To declare His Father's will to us: ‘All things that I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you.’ (St. John xv. 15) The Word of God came into the world to reveal what He has heard of the Father concerning our salvation. (3) That He might show the Father's love towards us: ‘God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him….’ (St. John iii. 16) [Easter Homilies: XII] The Word of God came into the world to reveal the Father’s love for us in the death of His Son. This is the Father’s joy. In stillness and quiet, if we contemplate the life of Christ, we shall find that His joy was His love for us, even in death, death upon the Cross.

But because everything that Christ said and did for us in time and place came from the Father, Christ must leave us because by His leaving He gives us an example. ‘Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.’ (1 St. John ii. 15) ‘Ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.’ (St. John xv. 19) According to Aquinas, Jesus ascends back to the Father to establish our final union with the Father in Heaven. (1) That he might intercede with Him for us: ‘I will pray the Father.’ (St. John xiv. 16) (2) That He might give to us the Holy Spirit: ‘If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you.’ (St. John xvi. 7) (3) That He might prepare for us a place with the Father: ‘I go to prepare a place for you.’ (St. John xiv. 2) To which place may He lead us. (Idem) Jesus is our Lord and pleads our cause with the Father. Jesus leaves us to send the Spirit so that we might embrace His Death and Resurrection inwardly and spiritually as the pattern of our death to sin and coming alive to righteousness. Jesus leaves us to prepare our future home in Heaven with the Father. In this, our hearts should be filled with all gratitude and joy.  

God’s Word has been spoken to us in Jesus Christ so that we might be saved. We must not only hear [God’s Word] but be doers of it (St. James i. 22), as St. James says this morning. For only by becoming doers of God’s Word, above ourselves, can we hope to find that unending joy that Christ experiences from the Father. Being a hearer of God’s Word and not a doer – the man who looks in the mirror and forgets what manner of man he is, is like someone who forgets that He was made by the Father to be like God, by obeying His Word through the help of His Spirit. Contemplating Christ, the Word made flesh, reveals to us who and what we were made to become in deed and in truth forever. (1 John iii. 18)

Christ, the Word made flesh now glorified, goes to prepare a place for us. (Idem) In Christ, our end, we see the perfect law of liberty that lives in the Father’s presence with perfect joy. Christ’s liberty is perfect joy. True liberty is found in knowing ourselves as God knows us. God knows us according to the good for which He has made us. We must seek to think those things that be good, and by God’s merciful guiding may perform the same. (Collect: Rogation Sunday) The human good has been redeemed and restored for us in Jesus Christ. As we contemplate the glorified Christ, we find God’s goodness for man, and ask the Father to harvest in us the salvation that Christ has won. Christ has won salvation for us by being wholly consumed with doing the Father’s will and perfecting human goodness. The Father’s will is that Christ’s goodness might enable us to die to sin, come alive to righteousness, and to be unspotted by the world. (St. James, i, 27) For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? (1 John 5:4-6) By believing in Christ through the Holy Spirit, we can become overcomers. In Christ, we can overcome the world, through faith, not asking for temporal rewards but, rather, asking for the strength and perseverance that will defeat our sin and idolatry, so that we may find the joy which we were made to enjoy forever.
A
men.
©wjsmartin
 

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