Rogation days
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Rogation days are the three days (Rogation Monday, Rogation Tuesday and Rogation Wednesday) immediately before Ascension Thursday in the Christian liturgical calendar. The term, most frequently encountered in Roman Catholic and Anglican circles, is rarely used today.
The word "Rogation" comes from the Latin verb rogare, meaning "to ask," and was applied to this time of the liturgical year because the Gospel reading for the previous Sunday included the passage "Ask and ye shall receive" (John 16:24). The Sunday itself was often called Rogation Sunday as a result, and marked the start of a three-week period (ending on Trinity Sunday), when Roman Catholic and Anglican clergy did not solemnize marriages (two other such periods of marital prohibition also formerly existed, one beginning on the first Sunday in Advent and continuing through the Octave of Epiphany, or 13 January, and the other running from Septuagesima until the Octave of Easter, the Sunday after Easter).
The faithful typically observed the Rogation days by fasting in preparation to celebrate the Ascension, and farmers often had their crops blessed by a priest at this time, which always occurs during the spring (in the Northern Hemisphere). Violet vestments were worn at the rogation litany and its associated mass, regardless of what color was worn at the ordinary liturgies of the day.
A common feature of Rogation days in former times was the ceremony of 'beating the bounds', in which a procession of parishioners, led by the priest, churchwarden, and choirboys, would proceed around the boundary of their parish and pray for its protection in the forthcoming year. The name derives from the practice of beating choirboys with sticks, a possible throwback to pagan practices of the regions[1].
The calendar reforms adopted by the Second Vatican Council in 1970 officially eliminated the Rogation days from the church calendar, and the Sunday preceding Ascension Thursday is now known simply as the Sixth Sunday of Easter. This observance in the Catholic Church has revived somewhat in some locales since 1988 when use of such older rites was permitted. Churches of the Anglican Communion reformed their liturgical calendar in 1976, but continue to recognize the three days before Ascension as an optional observance.
