Rogation Days
May 6, 2024
St. Elizabeth of Hungary joined processions with the poor on Rogations Days
MONDAY, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Ascension Thursday are known as Rogation Days in the true Catholic Church — days of penance and prayer before the great feast marking Christ’s departure from earth.
Can we do better than participate in this ancient custom this week?
The goal of these days, the great 19th-century French monk Dom Prosper Guéranger explained, is “to appease the anger of God, and avert the chastisements which the sins of the world so justly deserve; moreover, to draw down the divine blessing on the fruits of the earth.”
Stern, old-fashioned language!
But really new compared to nature worship — and much more fulfilling. Guéranger continues:
The Monk of St. Gaul’s, who has left us so many interesting details regarding the life of Charlemagne, tells us that this holy Emperor used to join the Processions of these three Days, and walk bare-footed from his palace to the Stational Church. We find St. Elizabeth of Hungary, in the 14th century, setting the like example: during the Rogation Days, she used to mingle with the poorest women of the place, and walked bare-footed, wearing a dress of coarse stuff. St. Charles Borromeo, who restored in his Diocese of Milan so many ancient practices of piety, was sure not to be indifferent about the Rogation Days. He spared neither word nor example to reanimate this salutary devotion among his people. He ordered fasting to be observed during these three Days; he fasted himself on bread and water. The Procession, in which all the Clergy of the City were obliged to join, and which began after the sprinkling of Ashes, started from the Cathedral at an early hour in the morning, and was not over till three or four o’clock in the afternoon. Thirteen Churches were visited on the Monday; nine, on the Tuesday; and eleven, on the Wednesday. The saintly Archbishop celebrated Mass and preached in one of these Churches.
If we compare the indifference shown by the Catholics of the present age, for the Rogation Days, with the devotion wherewith our ancestors kept them, we cannot but acknowledge that there is a great falling off in faith and piety.
The fields are green and the birds are singing. Pray for farmers. Despite everything we have enough. Guéranger has some stinging comments on this subject:
If, then, our Heavenly Father deign, this year, to bless the fruits of the earth, we may say, in all truth, that he gives food to them that forget and blaspheme him, as well as to them that make him the great object of their thoughts and service. Men of no religion will profit of the blessing, but they will not acknowledge it to be His; they will proclaim louder than ever, that Nature’s laws are now so well regulated by modern science, that she cannot help going on well! God will be silent, and feed the men that thus insult him. But why does he not speak? Why does he not make his wrath be felt? Because his Church has prayed; because he has found the ten just men, that is, the few for whose sake he mercifully consents to spare the world. He therefore permits these learned Economists, whom he could so easily stultify, to go on talking and writing. Thanks to this his patience, some of them will grow tired of their impious absurdity; an unexpected circumstance will open their eyes to the truth, and they will, one day, join us both in faith and prayer.
The beautiful Litany of the Saints was prayed on these special days before the Feast of the Ascension. Here it is.
