Rogation Days (1928 BCP)

Rogation Days (1928 BCP) are the three weekdays before Ascension Day in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer. The 1928 book gives them a proper collect, Epistle, and Gospel under the heading "The Rogation Days," so they are not merely an inherited folk custom or a note attached to the Fifth Sunday after Easter. They form a short course of prayer in Eastertide: the Church asks the Lord of heaven and earth for blessing on the land, hears Ezekiel's promise of covenant peace and fruitful increase, and receives Christ's command to ask, seek, and knock before the Ascension.

Prayer Book Text

The local 1928 propers source identifies the occasion precisely: Rogation Days are "the Three Days before Ascension Day." The collect is a prayer for providence, but its last clause prevents a purely agricultural reading. The Church asks for a fruitful season so that those who receive God's bounty may give thanks in his holy Church.

The Rogation Days

Being the Three Days before Ascension Day.

The Collect.

ALMIGHTY God, Lord of heaven and earth; We beseech thee to pour forth thy blessing upon this land, and to give us a fruitful season; that we, constantly receiving thy bounty, may evermore give thanks unto thee in thy holy Church; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Clause by clause, the collect moves from creation to thanksgiving. "Lord of heaven and earth" names God as the giver of both weather and soil. "Pour forth thy blessing" refuses any magical treatment of the fields: fruitfulness is requested from God, not seized by technique. "Upon this land" localizes the petition in the place where the parish lives and works. "Constantly receiving thy bounty" teaches dependence as a continuing condition, and "give thanks unto thee in thy holy Church" turns harvest and labor back into worship.

The appointed Epistle from Ezekiel 34 connects fruitful land with the Lord's covenant peace. The blessing requested in the collect is not detached prosperity; it belongs to a pastoral vision in which God's flock is safe, delivered, and known as his people.

I WILL make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land: and they shall dwell safely in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods. And I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will cause the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers of blessing. And the tree of the field shall yield her fruit, and the earth shall yield her increase, and they shall be safe in their land, and shall know that I am the Lord, when I have broken the bands of their yoke, and delivered them out of the hand of those that served themselves of them.

The rest of the appointed passage completes the same pastoral logic. Rogation prayer is for the earth, but the Prayer Book makes the earth's increase a sign of the Lord's care for his people.

And I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall be no more consumed with hunger in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more. Thus shall they know that I the Lord their God am with them, and that they, even the house of Israel, are my people, saith the Lord God. And ye my flock, the flock of my pasture, are men, and I am your God, saith the Lord God.

The appointed Gospel is Luke 11:5-13. It gives Rogation Days their New Testament discipline: the Church does not merely observe the fields, but asks the Father with confidence. The petition for bread in the parable is apt for Rogationtide, but Christ carries the promise beyond bread to the gift of the Holy Spirit.

And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?

Rogation Sunday and Ascension

The 1928 propers also mark the Fifth Sunday after Easter as "commonly called Rogation Sunday" in the comparative local source. Its Gospel from John 16 prepares the same pattern of asking before Ascension Day: prayer is offered to the Father in Christ's name, inside the paschal movement of the Son's return to the Father.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.

This placement matters. Rogation Days are not an isolated agricultural appendix; they stand between Easter and Ascension. The Church prays for ordinary land and labor while the Gospel teaches prayer in the name of the Son who goes to the Father. In that setting, thanksgiving for crops, work, and common life is brought into the ascended Christ's intercession rather than separated from doctrine.

Historical Development

Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere explain that the English Reformation retained parish perambulations on the three Rogation days but did not give them a Prayer Book office. Their account helps identify the 1928 American provision as a real liturgical development: the older custom had survived, but the 1928 book supplied a collect, Epistle, and Gospel for Holy Communion.

It has already been shown that at an early stage of the Reformation all other religious processions were abolished, except the perambulation of parishes on the three Rogation days before the Ascension. No office, however, was appointed in the Prayer Book for use on such occasions. Only a Homily was provided, which is divided into four parts, three to be read on the Rogation Days, and the fourth on the day of the perambulation.

E. Clowes Chorley gives a related account of Rogations and the English Litany. He traces the move toward English public prayer partly to the failure of Latin Rogation prayers to engage the people. This is important for Anglican interpretation: Rogation prayer belongs to common prayer that the people can hear, answer, and use.

The same year it was found that the people had become slack in attendance on the Rogations and this was partly attributed to the fact "that they understood no part of such prayers as were then sung and said." Consequently, as the quaint record runs, there were "set forth certain godly prayers and suffrages in our native English tongue."

Chorley also explicitly describes the 1928 American addition. The Rogation Days proper is paired with the Ember Days proper in a group of new provisions for celebrations of Holy Communion.

Provision is made, with the necessary liturgy, for celebrations of the Holy Communion for the Feast of the "Dedication of a Church"; the "Ember and Rogation Days," the subjects respectively being the Ministry of Christ's Church and prayers for a blessing on the labors of the husbandman.

Anglican Interpretation

Percy Dearmer's parish handbook is an Anglican witness to the pastoral meaning of Rogation Days. Although Dearmer writes for the Church of England rather than the 1928 American book, his interpretation matches the 1928 collect's concern: the days are intercession for God's blessing on the fruits of the earth, joined to litany and Eucharistic prayer.

The Rogation Days should be carefully kept as days of intercession for God's blessing on the fruits of the earth. The Litany should be said before the principal Eucharist on each day, violet being the colour for these two services.

Dearmer also preserves the older parish-boundary custom, but he treats it as pastoral opportunity rather than nostalgia. In a 1928 BCP setting, that older processional instinct is disciplined by the appointed collect, Epistle, and Gospel.

Here then we touch hands with ancient tradition; and the parson may easily accommodate it to his own opportunities. Something like the following may be found suitable.

His suggested order includes the public use of the very readings that the 1928 American book later provides as a Communion proper for Rogation Days.

As the precession proceeds let the Litany be sung, and perhaps metrical litanies, and the Penitential Psalms to fill up the time; and at the other stations let the Epistle and Gospel for the Rogation Days (James v. 16-20 and Luke xi. 5-13) be read, and other passages if there are more stations.

The 1928 BCP therefore receives Rogationtide in a distinctively Prayer Book way. It does not canonize every local custom, but it does give the Church a common text for asking God's blessing on land and labor. Its theology is neither sentimental nature piety nor secular productivity. Creation is God's bounty, harvest is received in dependence, and thanksgiving returns to God in the Church through Jesus Christ.

Use in Worship

In parish use, Rogation Days may be taught as a practical theology of providence. The collect asks for blessing on "this land"; the Epistle widens the request into covenant peace and deliverance; the Gospel commands persevering prayer; and the placement before Ascension keeps the whole observance under Christ's heavenly intercession. The days are especially suited for prayers for agriculture, work, stewardship, local community, and grateful use of creation.

See Also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• Church Calendar (1928 BCP)
• Collects Epistles and Gospels (1928 BCP)
• Collect for Rogation Days (1928 BCP)
• Ascensiontide in the 1928 BCP
• Days of Fasting and Abstinence (1928 BCP)

External Links

• The 1928 Book of Common Prayer, Propers for Various Occasions
• The 1928 Book of Common Prayer
• Procter and Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, chapter XIII
• E. Clowes Chorley, The New American Prayer Book, chapter I
• E. Clowes Chorley, The New American Prayer Book, chapter VIII
• Percy Dearmer, The Parson's Handbook, chapter VIII