Rogationtide and Ascension:

 

The week following the Fifth Sunday after Easter (often called Rogation Sunday) brings us four consecutive holy days.  Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of the coming week are the "Rogation Days" which take their name from the Latin verb rogare meaning 'to ask.'

 

As we might intuit, the Rogation Days are days of solemn prayer and supplication - prayer that finds as its particular focus an emphasis on asking for God's blessing upon newly planted (or soon to be planted) crops and for a fruitful harvest. The observance of the Rogation Days can be dated to as early as 470 AD and in our current context we might understand them as a fitting and necessary antecedent to our celebration of Thanksgiving in November when we give thanks for the harvest of crops that are now being planted.  

 

A service of Holy Communion (said) for Rogationtide will be offered on Tuesday, May 12 at 10:00 AM.

 

Immediately following the Rogation Days is one of the major feasts of the Christian year:  The Feast of our Lord's Ascension.  The book of Acts tells us that forty days after the Resurrection our Lord gathered the disciples together and charged them to wait in Jerusalem until they received the gift of the Holy Spirit.  It was after giving this final charge that St. Luke records for us:

 

And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. (Acts 1:9)

 

Thus it is forty days after Easter that we celebrate the culmination of the earthly ministry of our Lord.  Jesus Christ - the Word that became flesh, who was born, baptized, died, and rose again in his flesh now takes that same resurrected human body and ascends into heaven. 

 

The Ascension teaches us that Christ not only redeems us from the Fall of Adam, but raises us up with him far higher than our original edenic state would allow.  In the Ascension, writes St. Gregory, "our nature has...entered heaven." (Homily 29)

 

Ascension Day brings the Easter Season to a close when the Pascal Candle is extinguished after the words from the Gospel are read during the liturgy.  As with many of the great feasts of the liturgical year, the collect for the Ascension is prayed throughout the Octave of the feast both at Holy Communion and during Morning and Evening Prayer.  

 

A service of Holy Communion (with hymns) for the Feast of the Ascension will be offered on Thursday, May 14 at 7:00 PM.  A potluck reception will follow.  

Please bring a dish to pass if you are able.

 

Collect for the Ascension:

Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continually dwell, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.  Amen.  (BCP, 177)