Rogation Sunday (May 8, 2021)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

“The Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from the Father.”

Today is a Rogation Sunday. Rogation comes from that Latin word rogare which means “to ask, pray.” During a more agricultural and rural time, this time of year was hugely important because farmers would have been planting their crops right about now and so the Church set aside a Sunday to pray for protection by walking around the boundaries of the parish property and there would also be a blessing of crops. While we still observe these days, agricultural concerns aren’t really at the center of our attention so the focus of Rogation Sunday has evolved more to be about the significance of prayer (in fact, given how the past few years have gone, it can’t hurt to pray a few extra prayers for the avoidance of calamity).

To frame our conversation about prayer today, I want to revisit a tension that lies at the heart of our faith. There has long been a debate within the Church as to whether the fundamental character of our spirituality as Christians is contemplative or active. The great monastic tradition has often harped on the contemplative: the monk’s life centered around prayer in their cloister away from the hustle and bustle of the world. The monk is one who is free from certain vocations and activities so they can focus on living a life of prayer. Perhaps the criticism of focusing on contemplation is that it ignores some of the day-to-day of what goes on in the world. On the other hand, a life of action is one that seeks to do, to work. It may focus on missions work, the bringing of the Gospel out into the world or it may focus on a more generic building of the common good. Of course, the criticism of the vita activa is that it can get bogged down in action and distracted by all the cares and worries of the world that it forgets the importance of transcendence that can be arrived at through prayer.

I think at the end of the day, we would be doing serious harm if we tried to have contemplation without action or action without contemplation. We need both — prayer and work to fulfill our mission as the Church. Jennifer Summit and Blakely Vermeule explain this in their book Action Versus Contemplation: Why an Ancient Debate Still Matters, saying, “It is a misleading and dangerous illusion to treat ‘action versus contemplation’ as an either/or proposition. Action and contemplation have only intermittently been enemies. They are vibrantly alive in each of us, potentially fused rather than sundered” Though the order is important; there is a sense in which I would argue prayer has a priority over action but not in a way that ignores action, but brings it significance. My favorite Medieval theologian Hugh of Saint Victor discusses the importance of prayer by tying it to love of God: “As regards the love of God—it must have within us a threefold expression, so that nothing remains in us that is not given over to God. We are commanded first to love God ‘with all our heart.’ This means that we must refer all our thoughts to God. We must love Him ‘with our whole mind’; and this we do when we direct our reason, with which we judge and understand, to the service. Then we are bidden to love God ‘with our whole soul’; that is, we must make all the affections of our soul tend to Him.” This is hardly a passive vision given to us by Hugh because inevitably when our affections tend toward God, we move to give of ourselves to the other. As our Lord says in Matthew 25:40, “as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.” This dynamic is at work in our readings this morning as we see Our Lord discuss the significance of prayer in John 16:23-33 and then we hear St. James tell us about the importance of action in his epistle.

Jesus tells us that “if you ask anything of the Father, he will give it to you in my name. Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name; ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” The telos, the purpose, of prayer then is tied to instilling joy in the person who prays. Now we shouldn’t here confuse joy for fleeting happiness; joy isn’t carnal but a deep and fulfilling state of being that goes past mere emotion. And of course true joy comes not from worldly fame, political power, or wealth but from serving God and obeying his commandments. In fact, in John 15:11, a part of last week’s Gospel lesson, Our Lord exhorts us to to keep the Father’s commandments and to abide in his love “so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” So when we go to God in prayer, it’s about something much deeper than merely what we want, it’s about loving and obeying our Father. Prayer has a profound way of shaping us: “not my will but thy will be done.”

Jesus goes on to explain that prayer only happens because it is so intricately tied to the love between the Father and the Son: “In that day you will ask in my name; and I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from the Father.” The Father loves us because of our orientation towards his Son: we love him and believe him to be sent by the Father. When we are baptized, we are baptized “into Christ” and his death. When we receive the Holy Eucharist, we receive Christ into ourselves and are placed in Christ as members of his body, the Church. Ultimately, theologian Herbert McCabe claims that the Cross is the “archetype and source of all our prayer.” And this prayer isn’t just a contemplation but an action: “the crucifixion, the total self-abandonment of Jesus to the Father is not just a prayer that jesus offered, a thing he happened to do. What the Church came to realize is that it was the revelation of who Jesus is…When Jesus is lifted up, he appears for what he is. It is revealed that the deepest reality of Jesus is simply to be of the Father.” So then all our prayer, whether in the Mass, the Daily Office, or the prayers of our hearts “is a sharing into the sacrifice of Christ and therefore a sharing into the life of the Trinity, a sharing that is in the Spirit…prayer is not in fact primarily a human activity, it is something we do in virtue of being divine.”

Jesus then explains that his words are meant to prepare his disciples: “The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, every man to his home, and will leave me alone; yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. I have said this to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” So as we near the Ascension, Jesus prepares his Church for his departure. The disciples were scattered as our Lord neared his Passion but he will remain with us, imparting peace to us. Even though he’s not here with us, prayer is an extension of the mystery at the heart of the Mass that he will be with us always.

As we can see, prayer is so important. Unfortunately, it’s often thrown out as an easy out in hard conversations today: “thoughts and prayers” are often offered to those in grief or experiencing a hard time non-chalantly. St. James reminds us that prayer is not merely a private phenomenon but an action that is to be lived out in relation to the other. “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only.” Real prayer is an active, not process process. “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”

As Christ’s church, we are called to be a people of prayer. We do that first and foremost by participating in Mass, the mystery towards which all prayer points. We pray the Daily Offices which are ways for us to continue to live into the mystery of divine love. And we pray by pouring ourselves our for others — visiting orphans and widows, helping the poor and marginalized. So is prayer active or passive? The answer is yes. It is both. Herbert McCabe reminds us, “All prayer that really is prayer is in Christ’s name, that is, it is offered in virtue of our identification with Christ, our sharing in the sonship of God. Prayer is an entry into the mystery of the crucifixion of Christ, a sharing of the eternal exchange between Father and Son.” The more contemplative and prayerful we become, the more we should become alteri Christi: other Christs. The goal of prayer, “thy will be done,” is to conform us into the image of he who accomplished the will of his Father so that he could be Our Father.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.