Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. (Jas.1:22)

The Rogation Days are largely forgotten in the modern Church. They are Fifth Sunday after Easter and the three days before the Ascension. They originated in the Middle Ages and were set aside as special days of prayer, asking God for a good harvest after the spring planting.

We have four important feast days right in a row: Rogation Sunday, Ascension, Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday. As a result, the Rogation days tend to get "lost in the shuffle."

In the Church or England it was once common in rural villages and towns to hold Rogation processions in which the processional cross led the clergy and choir all around the community to bless the fields. In modern times this lives on in "beating the bounds" by processing around the parish property as a symbolic representation of the community. Although this practice is found in some American parishes, it has not been a major part of our corporate religious life here, being overshadowed by the Ascension that follows.

The story of Jesus' Ascension to the right hand of God, in the first chapter of the Book of Acts, was foretold by David in the Psalms when he wrote: "Sit thou on my right hand" in reference to the Messiah who would come. It also looks forward to the Trinity Season, the season of Christian growth and maturity. Jesus had promised the disciples in the days before His crucifixion that he would soon return to the Father, and that "where I am, ye may be also."

Jesus returns to the Father as both God and man. We thus have an "advocate with the Father" who is one of us. Jesus returns to the Father so that through Him we might fulfill our full potential as children of God and joint heirs with Christ through adoption.

The Trinity Season, which falls after Rogation-tide and Whitsunday, lasts until Advent in the Fall, when we begin the Christian Year all over again. It is set aside for growth in Christ. Hence, the color green is used in the Church to remind us of growth. During this season, the emphasis is on spiritual things, personal religion and our personal need to grow in Christ. We have been planted with Him in His death, and what we will produce after our own resurrection remains to be seen. As St. Paul wrote: "I have planted, Apollos watered, but God giveth the increase." Seen in this context the whole calendar of the Christian year is a repeating reminder of the manner in which God plants(through the Holy Spirit), waters (via Baptism), and nourishes (by the Word and Eucharist) our faith with the goal of a harvest of fruitful and redeemed souls. Our reason for being is to grow. As students of the love of God, we know that God is the origin of the love and affection we need in order to grow. God's love for us is also our source of spiritual growth. We need God's love to live and grow, just as, when we were children we needed our parent's love to live and grow.

On this Mother's Day, we are reminded that parents, as God's lieutenants, provide food and nurturing, but are also responsible for the spiritual development of their children.

In this era of two income families, Mothers are busy doers. Both the physical and spiritual needs must be met to raise healthy children. Sadly, while we worry about little league and piano lessons, about summer camps, cars and Nintendo games, we often forget the need for the spiritual training which they need as well. Children learn what they see and hear at home. A child's views on culture, ethics, manners, and morals are all more heavily influenced by parents than any other source. A child's views on authority mirror the views of their parents. One of the major reasons that discipline is so poor in the government school systems is the sad fact that the increased number of wild children of today are the off spring of the sixties generation. (My generation.)

My generation was the first in which children were often raised using the television as a babysitter, and the first generation raised according to the permissive attitudes of the likes of Dr. Spock. Scripture admonishes parents to raise them up in the "faith and fear of the Lord." Every mother, as a gift from God, who is given a child to nourish and nurture quickly learns the special cry of the infant when it needs to be fed, diapered or hugged. These are physical needs. But we sometimes forget that part of that nurturing is also raising them up in the Lord. And sadly, we see mothers today who have been so deprived of nurturing love in their own childhood as to be incapable of seeing their children as anything but a welfare check. Millions have been so selfish as to consign their unborn gift from God to the parishioners of death at the local abortuary.

Even though most of us do a reasonably good job, we see many of our young people drift away in the teen or early adult years. I always tell parents "Do not despair". Most of these will come back to Christ when they mature, when they marry, when they acquire adult responsibilities like children themselves. I tell such parents that seeds you planted, by faith, in their childhoods will likely reap a harvest of faith later as "God gives the increase."

But make no mistake, the only places children will get any moral teaching are in the home and the church. In the world we see attempt after attempt to remove every vestige of Christ from public life. Our children are systematically fed unbelief as an integral part of the curriculum in the schools. Even more sad is that most school children are taught more about Islam (on supposed cultural grounds) than Christianity.

In such an environment, it is more and more important that the young be taught the faith at home, and taken to Church. The days are gone when even such basics as the Ten Commandments and the Psalms of David are present in our schools. Even Christian teachers live in fear that religion or God will somehow be brought into a conversation by students lest the Teacher suffer punishment for "teaching religion."

To be doers of the word means that we put our religion to work in our daily lives. Our faith must become a part of who we are. Before we can accept Christ as Lord and Saviour we must first come to know Him. But knowing Him is not enough. We must also believe in Him. How can we know and believe in Christ if we do not go to Him for help? When we do go to Him do we listen and do what He says? (We find Him after all in Holy Scripture, in prayer and in the Sacraments of the Church.)

Going to Jesus is a lot like going to our family doctor. Our physician looks us over, we say "Ah." He prescribes a medicine that we are to take in a capsule three times a day for ten days. So we go to the drug store, fill the prescription and take it home. For some strange reason (perhaps we only trust ourselves), we usually take the medicine for a few days and then, when we feel a little better, we put the bottle in the medicine cabinet and forget about it. Thinking about the remaining seven days of the medicine will not help us. We have heard the doctor's words, but we cannot make ourselves do what he requires. We often will suffer a relapse of the illness, even though, in our own minds, we did what the doctor told us to do. Of course, we really didn't do what he told us to do at all.

Many of us live our Christian lives in much the same way. We go to Church only when we feel really good, or, conversely, when we are really, really desperate.

Many of us, when confronted with spiritual problems, will never come to their priest. Instead they attempt to deal with the problem by going off in some corner and either moping about it, or, even worse, talking about the problem with the unredeemed friends we have instead of taking the problem to Christ. (This is the spiritual equivalent to ignoring a malignant tumor on the one hand, or to resorting to treatment by a quack instead of a real doctor on the other.) In both cases, we seek an easy solution that will not require us to do anything about our real problem. St. James says that such a person "is like a man peering into a mirror: he sees himself, then goes away, and immediately forgets what he saw. If this man saw that his face was dirty, and didn't wash it while at the mirror, he can forget it. But his face is still dirty. Such an attitude, when applied to the call of Christ makes it easy to rationalize a non-response. One of the surest ways to recognize spiritual immaturity is when someone is afraid to go to the church and the clergy, or even to pray when they are dealing with personal problems. It means that they are not really seeking God's answers to their questions, but rather an avoidance of solutions.

In I Cor. 15, St. Paul writes that we have two natures One nature is that of the old Adam, with strictly earthly desires. The other nature, planted in us by the Holy Spirit, is like that of the New Adam, Christ. Paul says that we are planted here as earthly, terrestrial bodies, but that we are to be resurrected as heavenly bodies. We thus die with Christ at our baptism, and we are raised with Him at His Resurrection.

Each of us needs spiritual nourishment and spiritual medicine as much as we need physical nourishment and physical medicine. So we have earthly doctors and clinics and hospitals for the body, and priests and other ministers, and churches for the soul. But all of us are called upon to be doers of the word, and not hearers only. We are all expected to be like the Good Samaritan. This Rogation Sunday, we are called upon to pray for and to minister to the souls of men sown and resurrected and to give all praise and glory to God who in the abundance of His grace has given this responsibility to us.

Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.