Today’s entry is just a reminder: the Rogations Days are next week, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  This coming Sunday is nicknamed Rogation Sunday, as a result.  If you look at a church calendar (or at least, a traditional one) the Rogation Days stand out like a sore thumb – three purple days in a sea of white.

What’s rogation?  Well, rogare is Latin for ask, so a rogation day in the church is a day of prayer.  The rogation days, specifically, are days of prayer and fasting for the year’s crops.  The major time for the sewing and planting of crops is already done, in many climes of the Northern Hemisphere, so this is a point when farmers have done most of what they can, as the Scriptures say “one plants, another waters, but God gives the growth.”  So we stop and pray that God will protect and prosper the crops.

In recent centuries, as Western Christendom has moved out of agriculture-dominated economy and culture, the Rogation Days have taken on additional layers of prayer to cover other forms of business and industry.

Unless your church has a weekday communion service on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, it’s pretty easy for these days to slip by year by year, invisible to the vast majority of Christians.  One of the easiest ways to keep the spirit of Rogationtide is to grab a hymn appointed for Rogation and sing it on the 6th Sunday of (or 5th Sunday after) Easter.