The Sixth Sunday of Easter used to be known as Rogation Sunday. The fact that Rogation Sunday was once an annual observance marked by prayers asking for protection of herds and for a thriving crop explains why the day fell out of use in a culture of suburbanites and city dwellers.
In the early church (we're talking 400AD), the days in the week before Ascension Thursday were set aside as days of prayer and fasting as part of the rigor in focusing on the work of tending crops and shepherding herds. In the 5th Century, too, it seems that a certain volcano threatened an Italian diocese, so the Bishop ordered special prayers on the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday before Ascension. In later years (the 16th Century, and still in some districts today), rural Brits "beat the bounds" on Rogation Sunday, walking along the parish property lines in order to establish the boundaries in the communal memory of the people.
By parish property lines, we don't mean the block on which the church building is situated, nor even if we include a rectory where such church property still exists. We don't even really mean property in the ownership sense. Rather, the parish boundaries, or "bounds," is the extent of a geographical area that a particular church serves. Now, for Saint Luke's Church here in Forest Hills, walking the route of our parish boundary would be quite a path. We'd have to walk from Ridgewood, Queens to Rego Park to Forest Hills to as far east as Westbury in Nassau County. Ok, that's not the Far East, but you get my point: parish boundaries are fairly ambiguous since the automobile.
There's another way to beat/walk the bounds-- in prayer.
Though the observance of Rogation Sunday has pretty much evolved out of our calendar, there are still prayers in The Book of Common Prayer which can help us set our sites on what to ask for this coming Rogation Sunday.
There are three Rogation prayers:
* for the good use of land and sea (for healthy and just distribution of foodstuffs);
* for all people and their jobs (that all work is for the glory of God and our co-creative participation in God's plan);
* for our care taking of God's earth (so that neither our harvesting or extracting gets out of hand).
Seems like there are still relevant and contemporary reasons for Rogation Sunday!
Certainly, the prayer for all people and their work could include our concern for those presently unemployed, and our working to help those out of work.
