by Fr. Brian Wirth,
Director of Rural Life
As farmers find themselves back in the fields, laboring with Christ the Eternal Sower, sowing good seed during this planting season, Saturday (April 25) is a special date within the Church’s annual liturgical calendar.
April 25 is not only the feast of St. Mark the Evangelist, but also another important liturgical celebration. Tomorrow marks the Major Rogation day. Relatedly, Minor Rogation days occur on the three days before Ascension Thursday. (The Major Rogation date has no connection with the feast of St. Mark, whose feast was subsequently assigned to this date; the feast may be transferred to a different day.)
While Rogation days used to be celebrated regularly throughout Church history, these solemn days continue to bear significant importance physically and spiritually for agricultural dioceses.
Rogation Days go back to the 5th century. In 470 A.D., St. Mamertus, Bishop of Vienne in Gaul established Rogation Days in response to natural calamities and severe weather threatening crops, calling the people to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, and processions to seek Divine protection.
Rogation Days were liturgically adapted from ancient Roman pagan rituals, particularly the Roman feast of Robigalia, where Roman pagans offered prayers to the harvest gods, asking for favorable harvests.
Today, the observance of Rogation Days follow a structured liturgical pattern centered on formal prayer, fasting (even during the Easter Season), and a procession. Note: Any diocesan parish, rural or urban, around farmland or residential neighborhood, can participate in Major and Minor Rogation Days and do a procession around parish boundaries.
The centerpiece of the Major Rogation Day is the recitation of the Litany of the Saints, typically begun at the entrance of the parish church, while the priest carries the Crucifix, asking for God’s blessings upon the crops, fields, and farms, while also invoking the intercession of Mary and the Communion of Saints (via the Litany of Saints.)
Along with the priest, parishioners process around the boundaries of the parish, blessing the fields and /or marking territorial limits. The procession is both spiritual and physical, reinforcing parish community identity, Christian solidarity, and land boundaries.
The Litany of Saints may be repeated during the procession or penitential Psalms may be used (e.g. Psalm 51) in order to express humble and total dependence upon God.
Finally, the procession returns back to the station Church in a Rogation Mass, a Solemn Liturgy (Votive Mass) where the faithful pray united as One Body in Christ by the infinite fruitfulness of the Eucharist for a safe, successful, and fruitful harvest and for God’s Divine Mercy.
By the time of Pope St. Gregory the Great (540–604), Rogation Days were considered an ancient tradition in the Church. Moreover, Pope St. Gregory the Great established the date of the Major Rogation procession to April 25 on which date, according to Roman tradition St. Peter came to the Holy City for the first time.
As such, Rogation Days spread throughout Europe, reaching England by way of St. Augustine of Canterbury. In turn, the Church officially formalized the liturgical observances of Rogation Days under Pope Leo III in the early 9th century, integrating them fully into the Latin Rite.
Personally, brothers and sisters, as we continue to experience the various weather-related trials, namely, statewide drought, extensive wildfire damages/threats, strong wind gusts, soil erosion, parched lands, the growing resistance of weeds and insects, etc., re-establishing the practice of diocesan wide celebrations of the Major and Minor Rogation Days is one of my greatest desires for our diocese as the diocesan director of Catholic Rural Life.
Having said this, I want to encourage all my brother priests to prayerfully consider taking part in these powerful liturgies in order to further recognize as a diocese our total dependence upon God and His providential graces and mercies for our farmers, our diocesan families, for our great state of Nebraska, and for our nation.
Equally, to the laity, encourage your priests to celebrate the Major and Minor Rogation Days. If you need further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me! Or I would be happy to come and celebrate at your respective parishes.
In the recent words of Bishop James Conley in our diocesan pastoral plan, participation in liturgies like Major and Minor Rogation days, which personally affect every rural and urban parish in the diocese would be a powerful planting within the soil bed of faith and an authentic prayer of humility to God as Lord and Creator to further unite us in the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to become further entrenched as “One Heart in Christ.”
