A Service for Rogantiontide – booklet
In 2025: Rogation Sunday is on 25 May. (It was on 5 May in 2024)
Canon Brian Davis of Market Harborough put together a Rogation service with an ecological slant in 2018. You can download the booklet – It is a 12 side pdf file, so print it “Booklet fold” and it comes out as an A5 booklet. Or just enjoy reading it as it is.
He writes:-
Here is a simple idea for keeping Rogationtide, making it more relevant to our present environmental crisis. It was originally about asking God (Latin – rogare – to ask) to bless the crops. Rogation Days are the three weekdays before Ascension Day, but many churches
have observed Rogation on the preceding Sunday.
Traditionally a Rogationtide service is held outside. Our services are often too static, and isolated from the environment. So it is good to move outside, into God’s creation. And such a service is good for all ages – the children especially will love it. Being on the move keeps
our attention from wandering, and the message can come across much more effectively.
We celebrate God’s wonderful creation. We remind ourselves of how much we depend on the crops in the fields and farm animals for our food, as well as remembering so many other blessings. But it is also a time to repent of the harm we have done and are doing to our
planet: our neglect and exploitation of our environment; our treatment of our fellow creatures, so that many are now facing extinction; above all, global warming and climate change, largely
man-made. As Christians we cannot shrug our shoulders, and carry on as if nothing is happening. We human beings are responsible for planet earth. God has placed it in our hands. We must repent and with God’s help we can and we must change our ways.
Canon Brian Davis
Canon Davis is happy for people to use it at their Church either for Rogation Sunday or for any time of the year, and would be pleased to hear where it is used. If you would like to modify it for your use, then please get in touch with him direct
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Also relevant on GC’s website:-
“Four Rogation Services in One Day (with pictures)” (In N Yorks)
Eco-prayer walk Settle. We took our own chairs – here stopping at the allotments
And Record of an Eco-Prayer Walk and Downloadable Activity Sheet held at Settle 2015 (with pictures)
Comments on "A Service for Rogantiontide – booklet"
Andii Bowsher:
Just a quick response to Charles' response. I'd like to encourage a constructive engagement: maybe offer some re-writes of parts that seem problematic to you? It seemed to me that not much in that liturgy actually was condemning humanity for the problems: merely recognising that as a matter of fact, we have misused our responsibilities and need to recognise and confess that. It's true that extinctions have been part of the story of the earth -massively! But I'm not sure we'd want to press that into a carte blanche to effect that ourselves? -I mention that because that seems to me to be a strong possible interpretation of it being mentioned in the comment. I'd note that 'building a better world' (co-creating?) must surely invite us to stop species extinctions since we depend on the web of life. I was also a bit puzzled by the mention of Original Sin (I'd not have capitalised the words) -I couldn't really see how that was represented in the liturgy (maybe I missed it) as opposed to recognising simply that we had sinned. I happen to agree that many of the doctrines under the label 'original sin' have been tools of oppression.
Charles Baker:
There is a load of rubbish and falsehood contained in these words. Praising God for all the crops and animals while condemning Man for all the environmental problems ignores the fact that the crops and animals were developed by us and that species have vanished over the eons long before Man appeared. We are guided by Christ's teaching to build a better world. To constantly abase ourselves for Original Sin is surely a fiction continued by the Church for its own purpose
Rev Brian McAvoy:
Thank you,Canon Brian. A wonderfully relevant and manageable event, full of meaning and purpose. I'll be using most of it today in a small village Inn in Somerby in E Leics, in the village pub in sight of the most glorious countryside giving thanks and praying hard!
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