by CCW | 11 May 2026 11:30
Rogation Monday provides an extended commentary on the nature of prayer. The Eucharistic readings are complemented by the Office readings from Deuteronomy 7. 6-13 this morning and from Matthew 6. 5-18; and then in the evening from Deuteronomy 8 and Matthew 6.19-end; in short, a theology of the land as grounded in prayer, particularly the Lord’s Prayer which is given in both its Matthaean and Lucan forms.
The reading from Deuteronomy this morning emphasizes the theme of holiness through prayer in terms of God’s love for his people; in short, God’s mercy and goodness as distinct from our deserving. Paul in 1st Timothy expands on that sensibility in exhorting us to pray “for all” by way of “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks”, particularly “for kings and all that are in authority”; the condition for leading “a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.” In the Christian understanding, that is explicitly grounded in Christ. “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all.” Prayer shares in that work of divine mediation. We are gathered to God in prayer which is nothing less than God’s gathering us to himself and to our life in him and with him. His work in us and our work in him.
This understanding impells the sense of the universality of prayer, “praying everywhere, lifting up holy hands”. Praying everywhere and for all. Luke gives us the shorter form of the Lord’s Prayer taught to us by Jesus not on the basis of “if you pray” but “when you pray” before going on to emphasize the necessity of prayer as importunity. Prayer makes demands of us towards the good of others in spite of what is convenient and easy for us. Thus prayer is more than our personal interest and goodwill; it is rather about the larger sense of God moving in us. “Ask, and it shall be given you” – Rogation reminds us about the essential aspect of prayer ias asking; “seek, and ye shall find” – desire assumes a good that is to be sought and known; “knock, and it shall be opened unto you” – a reference to the theme of importunity and the necessity of asking and persevering in asking and seeking, not unlike the Canaanite woman or the blind man, Bartimaeus, on the roadside outside Jericho. Prayer is our life in and with God through seeking his will and purpose for the whole of our humanity in all of its diverse circumstances and needs. The very act of prayer as asking is equally about our learning what to pray for and in what kinds of ways.
That sense of prayer as learning is seen in the evening lesson from Deuteronomy and in the remaining verses of Matthew 6, the continuation of The Sermon on the Mount. In other words, we are taught about prayer as belonging to God’s will through Moses and the Law and then from Jesus himself in Matthew, once again, complementing the eucharistic Gospel from Luke. All of this extends to the Collect, Lesson and Gospel for the Fruits of the Earth and the Labours of Men provided for Rogationtide that recall us to our humanity as made in the image of God and placed in the world to act in the image of God’s domination or lordship of all creation. Our labours are understood in terms of the parable of the mustard seed. How much is made out of something so little and for the good of the whole created order! Prayer is our work, our work in and with God through Christ Jesus the mediator and the redeemer of the whole of creation. In the lifting up of hands and the lifting up of our hearts, all things are gathered to God by God and by God in us by prayer. Rogation and Ascension reveal the radical nature of prayer.
Fr. David Curry
Rogation Monday, 2026
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