A Homily for the Mass of Rogations on the Third Sunday after Easter

​+ The solemn festal procession of the Greater Litanies we have made this morning is of great antiquity, dating in its present form from the sixth century pontificate of Saint Gregory the Great. And it is of great importance, so much so that in conventual churches such as ours, the Mass of Rogations takes precedence over that of the Sunday (which, nevertheless, is not forgotten though its liturgical commemoration).

“Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened,” the Gospel of this Holy Mass teaches us.
 
This morning, with litanies and in procession we have solemnly asked Almighty God for all our needs. I say “our” needs, because none of the liturgical prayers of the Rogation procession or Mass features the word “I”. The intercession we make is not primarily about me, it is about us – it is about the Church of God as she strives to be faithful to her mission as the instrument of salvation in the world.
 
Spirituality in the modern period has tended to be very individualistic, and in the light of that phenomenon the Gospel of this Holy Mass may leave me stamping my foot impatiently waiting for God to deliver to me what I want – and now! However, as all Sacred Scripture, the Gospel lives and breathes in the Sacred Liturgy and in this, its natural habitat, we can see that its teaching today is not about me or my will, but about God’s Providence for us as the Church, in which each of us is privileged to share by virtue of our baptism.
 
“Your heavenly Father [will] give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him” the Gospel teaches us this morning – not my latest demand, which may well approach the blasphemy of insisting that God conforms to my will!
 
If the prominence given to the Rogation Mass caused by its falling on a Sunday this year helps us to learn this lesson, it will be a truly Providential gift of God. Each of us needs to learn again and again to tear up our lists of demands that seek to hold God hostage to our own will and to ask simply for His Spirit. With that Gift, the Gift of the Paraclete for Whom in the coming weeks the Paschal liturgy longs with increasing expectation and intensity, everything else we truly need will follow.
 
“But when?” we are tempted to insist in our prayer. “When will God provide that which I want/need/etc.?” We can often travail and anguish in the apparent absence of God and of His gifts.
 
Our Blessed Lord speaks of this sadness and distress – of our experiencing sorrow whilst all around us in the world seem to rejoice - in the Gospel of this third Sunday after Easter. We must go through the pains of birth, He teaches us. That is to say, we must persevere – no matter what! – for, as Saint Benedict (drawing on the tenth chapter of the Gospel of Saint Matthew) teaches in His Rule, the monks meeting “with difficulties and contradictions and even injustice … should with a silent mind hold fast to patience, and enduring, neither tire nor run away, for the Scripture saith: He that shall persevere to the end shall be saved.” (Ch. 7) Indeed, Our Lord insists in todays Easter gospel that our sorrow “shall be turned into joy,” a joy “which nobody can take away from you.”

This is the gift that Almighty God wishes to give us. This is what we, the Church, and the world, truly need. And it is for this that we make solemn supplication through the Rogations of this day. If we do so “with a silent mind,” if we “hold fast to patience,” if we endure and neither tire nor run away from the difficulties that confront us, if we persevere unto the end, we shall receive this gift of inestimable value. We shall rejoice in that peace that is to be found even amidst the thorns of this world.
 
For the grace of perseverance unto that end, in ourselves and in others, let offer earnest entreaty to Almighty God at this, His Altar, this morning. +