Rogation Sunday

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These things have I spoken unto you, that in me 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, and it 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. 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 Sundaysome clergymen and their flocks process around the parish boundaries to bless the crops and pray for a fruitful harvest…and, with any hope, pray against soul rust that leads to Hellfire and Damnation.

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 that new risen life that He would win for them as they shall ask the Father in the name of Jesus. But both the petitioning and the rewards would depend upon the coming of the Holy Spirit. What Jesus teaches us today is that we must ask the Father in or through His Name for the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the Word made flesh through whom we pray and supplicate the Father. For this reason, we end every prayer with through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Jesus says today: Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. (Ibid, 24) Notice that the end of our asking is is that our joy may be full. (Idem)Eastertide is all about learning to ask for what shall fulfill our heart’s deepest desire – the fullness of joy. For what else is Eastertide about than how the resurrection from sin, death, and Satan begins to give us that joy that God has in store for us? But 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 back to Heaven. Here alone we shall find that goodness that alone yields the perfect joythat will have no end.

But what is this joy? Christian joy is found in the sweet surrender of Jesus to the fulfillment of God’s will. True joy is found in that delight of the Father’s Word, Jesus Christ, that always emanates His Love. It is not found first and foremost in bodily health, through earthly ambition and success, by securing temporal riches and treasures, and not even in gaining converts and in seeing the success of God’s work! True joy is found in the vision of God the Father whose Love begets His Word, His Truth, His Wisdom. True joy is found in the experience of God the Father, begetting His Word, by the Love of His Spirit. 

And to appreciate God in Himself, we must leave behind the cares of this world which choke our contemplative exercise. If we are consumed with this life and its earthly comfort, we shall never have the time to behold the Father’s Eternal Word of Love for us as the Ascended Christ enters our hearts. To get into right relation with God, we must follow Jesus, that where He is, there we might be also. (St. John xiv. 3) Bishop K.E. Kirk has this to say about contemplation:

Contemplation, or the Prayer of Simplicity or Quiet, is the highest interior activity of the spiritual life - indeed, it aims not at being an activity at all, but at reducing the soul to a purely passive condition in which it may listen, unimpeded by thoughts of self or the cares of the world, to the voice God alone.' As rest is the end of motion so contemplation is
the end of all other…internal and external exercises; for to this end, by long discourse and much practice of affection, the soul inquires and tends to a worthy object that she may      quietly contemplate it and...repose with contentment in it.'
(Some Principles of Moral Theology, p. 163)
 
Thus, stillness and quiet are necessary preconditions for the relationship that Jesus desires for us to have with our Heavenly Father. If in stillness and quiet we become passively open to God’s presence, we shall be postured spiritually to find eternal joy. Jesus says today, The time is coming when I shall no longer speak to you in parables, but I will tell you plainly of the Father. (Ibid, 25) In stillness and quiet, in a plain way, Christ the Word will lead us back to the Father. I came forth from the Father, He says. St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that this was 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) (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) (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] Jesus the Word reveals the Father to us. In addition, He reveals the Father’s will for us. And, finally, He shows that the Father’s will for our salvation is the deepest expression of His Love for us through the coming of the Holy Ghost. This is God’s joy. In stillness and quiet, if we ask, Christ will lead us to the Father, disclose His will, and provide the way of Love that leads us home to Heaven. 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) Christ leaves us so that we might follow Him to that better and lasting place where true joy is to be found. He must leave us and ascend to the Father so (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) Christ leaves us to plead our cause, to send His Spirit into our hearts, and to prepare a place for us. This should begin to stir our hearts for the journey after eternal joy.         

God’s Word has been spoken through Jesus Christ in order that we might be doers of the Word and not hearers only, deceiving [our] own selves, as St. James says this morning. St. James says that we must be willing to spend enough time – a lifetime in fact, with God’s Word, Jesus Christ, so that what we see in contemplation we might do in Love because it leads to true joy. We shall desire to obey because Loving the Father’s Word, we hope to find true joy. Monsignor Knox tells us that 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 much like someone who listens carefully to a reading of Thomas a Kempis’ ‘Imitation of Christ’. He understands it and thinks that the book is really about Christians like himself – he finds a reflection of himself in it. [But] it is only if he will give a good long look at our Lord’s teaching that this self-satisfied person will see the real picture which it conveys, very different indeed from the ‘self-portrait’ that he first found in it! (Epistles and Gospels: Know, p. 138) Jesus the Word of God conveys to us a picture of Himself. God the Father sees us in Christ the Word, the picture of who we were made to become. Forsaking this, we become self-satisfied. Then we reveal that we are not in need of finding God’s true joy through the Father’s Word of Love in Jesus Christ. But the real picture that Jesus should convey to us that we should love neither in word nor in tongue but in deed and in truth (1 John iii. 18).In our self-portraits, we must begin to see what every man ought to look like in Jesus Christ. We must long to see ourselves in Jesus Christ, the Father’s Word, Plan, Purpose, and Intention for us. We must long to progress in being acclimated to this Word of Love to find true joy.

When contemplating the saving life of Jesus and hearing His Word that has overcome the world and given to us the perfect law of liberty that moves in and out of God the Father’s presence, we shall begin to find our true selves. This will be the substance of our joy. Again, to reach this place of joy, silence and contemplative stillness are all-important. What we must silence in ourselves is all superficial converse with other men. What we must silence is the earthly craving for impermanent joy.Then our spiritual stillness will lead us into a deep desire to imitate what we contemplate –Christ in union with our Heavenly Father through the Holy Spirit’s Love. For, as Mother Teresa tells us:

In the silence of the heart, God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your   nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself (–with His Holy Spirit.) Souls of prayer are souls of great silence. 

                  (Mother Teresa, In the Heart of the World: Thoughts, Stories and Prayers)
 
As we contemplate Christ in glory today, let us long to be filled with Christ, the Word of God’s Love. Let us find in Him that self-emptying that is always filled with the Father’s Love and Desire for us. In both let us discover the joy that knows no end.
Amen.
©wjsmartin

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