Rogation – The craze that’s sweeping the nation…..

….. or so I was assured by friends last year, but I have to say I had seen little evidence that it had until… . yesterday when I discovered that there are pockets of the Anglican Church that still go all in for all the fun of Rogation Sunday and my attachment church is one of them.

So after the briefest of pit stops for coffee after the morning service the massed ranks of the church – i.e. those who hadn’t managed to make a quick getaway on some flimsy pretext set out to beat the bounds.

I wish I could have taken some photos but alas I think that would have been deemed out of keeping with the seriousness of the occasion so you will have to imagine…

The procession was headed up by the verger with her staff of office (very handy for stopping traffic as we crossed roads!), academic gown and wonderfully lacy white gloves, followed by the aspersory bearer who was the chap in cassock and cotta swinging the thurifer full of incense round for all he was worth. He was followed by two taperers carrying the processional candles, then of course the cross then the church banner complete with wonderfully kitch Madonna and child sewn on it and its two attendants. All these people of course also in cassocks and cottas. Next came the choir in their choir cassocks and the cantor who had the most splendid gold cope on. Following was the master of ceremonies (though he spent a great deal of the time not in place but running up and down the procession making sure everything was going to plan (not an easy thing to do in a cassock and full length lacey cotta I can tell you, I though we were going to have a disaster at one point when in his hurry he slipped in the mud but he thankfully managed to stay on his feet – just!)

Are you still with me? – right well we now have the church wardens, also in academic gowns and carrying their staffs of office and then the vicar in quite the most magnificent get up of cassock, very lacy cotta, gold stole, gold heavily embroidered cape and his berretta with a red pom-pom on top. He was attended by two cope bearers whose job it was to hold up his cape to stop it dragging in the mud. He was followed by the Assistant priest and deacon also in gold and then the rear was taken by the congregation.

I can, hand on heart, say I have never seen anything quite like it in my whole life and judging by the shocked expressions on the faces of the people we passed, neither had they!

We walked round the whole parish boundary in this way stopping to pray for various things on the way. There was a worrying moment when we got the fields at the far end of the parish where we were due to bless the beasts only to find that the cows hadn’t been put out to pasture yet. I was wondering whether we were going to have to bless the nearby ducks in abstentia of the cows but thankfully a cow was spotted at the back of the next field and so all was well even though it did test the arm strength of the vicar trying to sprinkle the holy water that far…

The bounds were dully beaten towards the end when the building marking the boundary with our neighbouring parish was ceremonially struck with the churchwardens staffs and then all done for another year we retired to the church hall for a well earned cup of tea (and fantastic chocolate brownies…)

So will rogation sweep the nation? Sadly I doubt it – but I think I shall try and bring some bound beating to my churches in the future as it was wonderful to be out and about praying for the parish in this way – though I may well leave the gold cope at home, I wouldn’t want to overdo it after all…