05/10/2026
Rogation Faith: The Farmer Who Prayed
Good morning.
I come not to teach you something foreign, but to sit with you in the Scriptures the Church has given us for this Sunday, and to reflect together on what God is saying to his people in this season.
And what a season it is. We are on the final Sunday before Ascension Thursday. The Church calls this Rogation Sunday — and the days that follow, Monday through Wednesday, are the Rogation Days. These are ancient days of prayer and fasting, when the Church would walk through the fields, pray over the crops, and ask God's blessing on the work of human hands. The word "rogation" comes from the Latin rogare — to ask. These are days of asking. Days of dependence. Days of humility before God.
Now, I want to begin with a saint whose life fits this season perfectly. His name is Isidore — St. Isidore the Farmer, sometimes called St. Isidore the Laborer. His feast day falls on May 15th, just a few days from now. And I think it is no accident that his feast lands so close to Rogation Days, because his life is one of the most beautiful pictures in the history of the Church of what it looks like when faith and prayer are not separated from daily work.
Isidore was born in Madrid, Spain, around the year 1070. He was not a nobleman. He was not a scholar. He was a farmhand — a laborer who worked the land for a wealthy landowner named Juan de Vargas. He spent his whole life in that humble station. He never rose to prominence. He never held office. He never wrote a theological treatise. He simply worked, and he prayed, and he loved God with his whole heart.
The stories told about Isidore are the kind that have been passed down because they carry truth in them. One of the most famous is this: some of his fellow workers complained to their master, Juan de Vargas, that Isidore was always arriving late to the fields because he spent so much time at morning Mass and in prayer. So Juan went out to see for himself — and what he saw stopped him in his tracks. While Isidore was still at prayer, angels were plowing his portion of the field. The work was being done. The furrows were straight. The ground was turned. And Isidore had not yet arrived.
Now, whether we understand that story as a literal miracle God allowed a man to witness, or as a holy tradition's way of saying that God honored Isidore's prayer with supernatural provision, the message is the same: God is not indifferent to the man who seeks him first. "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness," Jesus said, "and all these things will be added to you" (Matthew 6:33, ESV-CE). Isidore lived that verse in the dirt of a Spanish field.
What strikes me most about Isidore is not the angels. It's the consistency. He didn't pray dramatically once and then coast. He rose early, every day, and went to Mass. He prayed as he walked to the fields. He prayed as he worked. He gave food to the poor from his own portion. He and his wife, Maria Torribia — herself a saint — lived a life of quiet, steady holiness. Not spectacular. Not celebrated in his own lifetime. Just faithful.
And that is exactly the kind of faith the Church is calling us to in this season. Not a faith that is only heard on Sunday and forgotten by Monday. Not a prayer life that is reserved for crises and ignored in the ordinary. But a faith that is woven into the fabric of daily life — into the fields, into the kitchens, into the workshops, into the schools, into the homes of Catholic families like yours.
So today, I want to speak simply and practically about three things: what it means to be doers of the word, what it means to pray in Jesus' name, and how those two things belong together. And then I want to close with a gentle invitation — something you can actually carry into these Rogation Days and beyond. Something small enough to do, and significant enough to matter.
Doers of the Word
Our Epistle today comes from the Letter of James, and it is one of the most practically challenging passages in all of the New Testament. James writes: "But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves" (James 1:22, ESV-CE).
Let that land for a moment. It is possible — James says it plainly — to hear the word of God and still deceive yourself. Not deceive your neighbor. Not deceive your priest. Yourself. There is a kind of religion that is all listening and no living. All nodding and no changing. All Sunday and no Monday. And James says that kind of religion is self-deception.
He gives us a vivid illustration: "For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like" (James 1:23–24, ESV-CE). Think about that image. A mirror is not meant to be admired — it's meant to lead to action. If you look in the mirror and see that your face is dirty, you wash it. If you see that your collar is crooked, you straighten it. The mirror is a tool for change, not a painting to hang on the wall.
The word of God is like that. It shows us the truth about ourselves — about our sin, our need, our calling, our dignity as children of God. And it shows us that truth not so we can feel informed, but so we can be transformed. The Catechism of the Council of Trent is very clear on this point: God's commandments are not given merely to be known, but to be obeyed. The Church has always taught that knowledge of the faith without the practice of the faith is a kind of spiritual poverty — perhaps even a spiritual danger, because it can breed pride without producing holiness.
James continues: "But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing" (James 1:25, ESV-CE). Notice that phrase — "the law of liberty." That might seem like a contradiction. Law and liberty together? But the Church has always understood that true freedom is not the absence of all constraint — it is the freedom to become what God made us to be. A fish is not free when it is out of water. A soul is not free when it is out of God's grace. The law of God is not a cage; it is the shape of the life we were made for.
And the blessing, James says, comes in the doing. Not in the knowing. Not in the agreeing. In the doing. This is not a works-righteousness — as if we earn God's love by our efforts. God forbid. But it is a recognition that obedience is the road where God's blessing travels. You don't create the road by walking on it, but if you step off the road, you shouldn't be surprised when you end up lost.
Then James gets even more specific — and more uncomfortable: "If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless" (James 1:26, ESV-CE). Worthless. That is a strong word. James is saying: if your faith hasn't reached your mouth — how you speak about your neighbor, how you speak to your spouse, how you speak about those you disagree with — then something is deeply wrong. The tongue is a small thing, but it reveals the heart. And the heart is where faith either lives or merely visits.
And then James gives us his definition of true religion — and it is beautifully simple: "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world" (James 1:27, ESV-CE). Two things. Care for the vulnerable. Live a clean life. That's not a complicated program. It's not a long list of theological requirements. It is practical, daily, visible faith. Faith that can be seen by your children. Faith that can be felt by your neighbor. Faith that costs something.
The Baltimore Catechism, which many of you may have learned from as children, teaches that we are made to know God, to love God, and to serve God in this world, and to be happy with him forever in the next. Notice the order: know, love, serve. Knowledge leads to love, and love leads to service. Doing is not separate from believing — it is the fruit of believing. When faith is real, it moves the hands and the feet, not only the mind.
And here is where Rogation Days speak to us so powerfully. Rogation Days are not only about asking God to bless the crops out there in the fields. They are also about asking God to bless the harvest in here — in our hearts, in our homes, in our habits. We can pray for wheat and corn and good weather, and we should. But we also need to pray for patience with our children, honesty in our business, charity toward our neighbor, purity in our thoughts. Because those are the fruits God most wants to grow in us. And like any good crop, they require both labor and grace — our effort, and God's blessing.
Prayer in His Name
Now, if James presses us toward doing, the Gospel presses us toward asking. And these two pressures are not in conflict — they are two sides of the same coin. But let's sit with the Gospel for a moment, because Jesus says something here that is both a great promise and a great mystery.
He says: "Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full" (John 16:23–24, ESV-CE).
Whatever you ask. Ask, and you will receive. Your joy will be full. Those are extraordinary words. And if we are honest, most of us have prayed prayers that seemed to go unanswered. We have asked for healing that did not come. We have asked for a marriage to be restored and watched it fall apart. We have asked for a child to return to the faith and waited years without seeing it. So what does Jesus mean?
He is not giving us a vending machine theology — put in the right prayer, pull out the right result. He is inviting us into a relationship. He is describing what prayer looks like when it flows from faith — from trust in a Father who is good, who is wise, who sees more than we see, and who loves us more than we love ourselves.
The Baltimore Catechism teaches that prayer is "the lifting up of our minds and hearts to God." That definition is worth sitting with. Not just the mind — the heart too. Not just the intellect — the will, the affections, the desires. True prayer is not reciting words at God. It is turning toward God. It is orienting the whole person — mind, heart, will — toward the one who made us and redeemed us.
And the Catechism of the Council of Trent, in its treatment of prayer, emphasizes that prayer must be offered with faith, with humility, with perseverance, and with submission to God's will. These are not obstacles to answered prayer — they are the very shape of prayer that God honors. We ask in faith, believing that God hears. We ask in humility, knowing we are not God and do not always know what is best. We ask with perseverance, not giving up when the answer is slow. And we ask in submission — "not my will, but yours be done" — because we trust the Father's wisdom more than our own.
Now, what does it mean to ask "in my name"? Jesus says it twice in this passage. It is not a formula. It is not a magic phrase we attach to the end of a prayer to make it work. To ask in Jesus' name is to ask as those who belong to Jesus — those who have been baptized into his death and resurrection, those who are learning his heart, those who want what he wants. It means we come to the Father through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit. It means our prayer is not self-centered — "give me what I want" — but God-centered — "Father, your will be done, and in your will, provide what we need."
And then Jesus says something that I find deeply moving: "I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God" (John 16:26–27, ESV-CE). The Father himself loves you. Sometimes we carry a picture of God in our minds as reluctant — as if he is hard to approach, as if he needs to be persuaded to be kind, as if Jesus is the warm one and the Father is the stern one. But Jesus corrects that picture. The Father himself loves you. The Father is not against you. The Father is not waiting to catch you in a mistake. The Father is for you.
Pope St. Gregory the Great, writing long before our own time, said this: "We must pray not so that we may inform God of our needs, for he knows them already, but so that we ourselves may be capable of receiving what he is prepared to give." That is a profound reorientation. Prayer is not primarily about changing God's mind. Prayer is about changing us — opening us, humbling us, aligning us with what God is already ready to give. Prayer is how we become capable of receiving grace.
And so prayer is not trying to break down God's resistance. Prayer is coming home. Prayer is a child stepping into the Father's presence and saying, "Father, I am here. I need you. I trust you." Prayer is a laborer lifting his eyes from the furrow and saying, "Lord, I cannot do this without you." Prayer is a mother at the end of a long day saying, "Father, I gave what I had. Please make it enough."
That is why Rogation Days matter so much. They are the Church's ancient way of teaching her children to ask with humility. They remind us that we are not self-sufficient. A farmer can be the most skilled, hardworking, experienced man in the county — and he still cannot command the rain. He cannot guarantee the frost will not come. He cannot make the seed germinate by sheer willpower. He is dependent. And Rogation Days train the whole Church — not just farmers — to say together: "Father, we depend on you. We ask. We trust. We wait."
Faith and Prayer Are One
James says the one who perseveres “will be blessed in his doing” (James 1:25, ESV-CE). Jesus says, “Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full” (John 16:24, ESV-CE). Blessing in doing. Joy in asking. That’s a whole Christian life in two phrases.
St. Isidore’s Fields
St. Isidore shows us that holiness is not only found in monasteries or in dramatic moments. Holiness can be found in a field. Holiness can be found in a kitchen. Holiness can be found in a shop. Holiness can be found in a schoolroom. Wherever a Christian learns to pray and obey, God is near.
A Rogation Days Invitation
May God bless the fields and the gardens, the shops and the kitchens, the schools and the workplaces. May he bless the work of our hands. And during these Rogation Days, may he especially bless us with daily prayer—steady, humble, sincere—so that our joy may be full, and our lives may bear good fruit. Amen.
