Rogation

The Frost of '26

The vineyards of Virginia suffered a significant late Spring frost on April 21. Estimates of crop loss among the acres of established grape vines ran as high as ninety percent…

“What is today’s Collect?” Ralph threw out to the small gathering as he thumbed through a BCP.

Steve replied.

“It is Rogation Sunday coming up. What is Rogation, anyway?”

“I remember Lige’s lecture from a dozen years back,” piped up one of the early Saturday attendants. “It was the Church calendar date when novitiates were taken to the bounds and corners of the Parish that defined their turf…"

He remembered that the verb used in the Old South was carried, not taken to.

Ralph read from his cell phone screen.

“From Britannica”, he noted before reading.

Coninuing, “Rogation Days, in the Roman Catholic Church, festival days devoted to special prayers for crops. They comprise the Major Rogation (Major Litany) on April 25 and the Minor Rogations (Minor Litany) on the three days before the feast of the Ascension (40th day after Easter).

The Major Rogation (from Latin rogare, “to ask [for God’s blessings and mercy]”) originated as a Christian festival to supplant a pagan Roman festival, Robigalia, which consisted of a procession from Rome to a point outside the city, where a dog and a sheep were sacrificed to save the crops from blight (robigo, “wheat rust”). According to a document of Pope Gregory I, the Christian festival was established as an annual event by the year 598. The Christian procession followed the same route as the pagan procession for a certain distance and then turned off and returned to St. Peter’s Basilica, where mass was celebrated.

The Minor Rogations were first introduced in Gaul by St. Mamertus of Vienne about the year 470 and were made binding for all of Gaul by the first Council of Orléans (511). Later (c. 800) the festival days were adopted in Rome by Pope Leo III. It is possible that Mamertus first instituted the Minor Rogations to replace three days of pagan crop processions called the Ambarvalia. The Minor Rogations were traditionally observed with processional litanies and fasting as a supplication for clement weather for the crops and deliverance from pestilence and famine. In 1969 the Minor Rogations were changed to votive masses.

“That’s much like what Lige taught…an agricultural plea for early budbreak without a killing frost, and the minor pilgrimmage to the corners and fields of the Parish boundary in awareness of dependence on God and weather…Nor was it a Christian invention.”

* * *

Another botannical question for you,” Steve tendered as they were drifting toward the door at the end of the session. “The leaves on some of the shrubs in the garden don’t look so good…”

It took a moment to answer simply.

“In established grape vines, they grow from green shoots to gray wooded canes that harden to withstand winter. The buds are small, dormant leathern blips every few inches. Each contains three primoirdia…”

Steve halted him: “I don’t know what primodria is…”

“You know, anlage, the precursors or embryos from which stems and leaves will develop in spring…”

He continued.

“Evolution has given each bud three shots at developing leaves…”

Ralph looked sternly over his pince nez. “You mean God…”

“I look at God and evolution as the same,” he replied not wanting to ignite a theological discussion that would make him late for his gym session that Saturday. In his silent mind, these two could not exist without each other, came and went without comment.

“Of course, the harvests in August that arise from a secondary or tertiary bud in April, may not be so good…” but he was speculating.

“That means,” inferred Steve, “…that wine prices will increase…?”

By then, they stood chatting outside the cottage, of barns, and new Parish construction and of the lumber that had been donated and was drying in the Parish barn. So too, they noticed blips of rain drops starting to appear on his green flight jacket.

“Intermittent rain today, they said”, Ralph added, squinting into the cloud cover above.

“Have a good day: Steve, if you have lived well, the rain will pass over your garden without falling…”