The modest, easy-to-have-missed occurrence earlier this week of Earth Day 2026 reminded me of when Earth Day was still new and exciting - and concerns it highlights were likewise new and exciting. I can still remember as a college student attending the first Earth Day celebration in Central Park in 1970, when nearly one million people participated in Earth Day events around the city. Hardly anyone then spoke much about climate change (although my Geology teacher at City College did). For most the focus was on pollution and the progress that was beginning to be made in that area.
But, long before the invention of Earth Day, we had, for centuries, had Rogation Days!
From the reign of Pope Saint Gregory the Great until that of Pope Saint Paul VI, April 25 (which, for some reason, was widely also thought to have been the date on which Saint Peter had first arrived in Rome) was observed in the Roman calendar as one of the four annual Rogation Days. The April 25 celebration was known as the Litanaie majores (the "Greater Litanies"). The other three Rogation Days (the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before the Ascension) were known as the Litaniae minores (the "Lesser Litanies") and were of ancient Gallican, non-Roman origin. I have previously written here [Cuckoo Day April 25, 2012] about the pre-Christian roots of the "Greater Litanies" in the ancient Roman Robigalia festival, one of ancient Rome's significant spring agricultural commemorations. As I noted then:
From the reign of Pope Saint Gregory the Great until that of Pope Saint Paul VI, April 25 (which, for some reason, was widely also thought to have been the date on which Saint Peter had first arrived in Rome) was observed in the Roman calendar as one of the four annual Rogation Days. The April 25 celebration was known as the Litanaie majores (the "Greater Litanies"). The other three Rogation Days (the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before the Ascension) were known as the Litaniae minores (the "Lesser Litanies") and were of ancient Gallican, non-Roman origin. I have previously written here [Cuckoo Day April 25, 2012] about the pre-Christian roots of the "Greater Litanies" in the ancient Roman Robigalia festival, one of ancient Rome's significant spring agricultural commemorations. As I noted then:
“Ancient peoples appreciated their dependence on the natural seasons and the harvest. The change in religion redirected the focus of people's prayers to the true Creator God. But that didn't change their dependence on nature or their need for a successful harvest or the value of ritualizing that on traditional days.”
I also suggested that, in the light of contemporary environmental degradation and the dangers to human civilization posed by climate change's devastating effects:
“Perhaps a rationalized late 20th-century Roman Liturgy's abandonment of such reminders of our connection - and dependence - on nature wasn't such a smart idea, after all.”
Neither the pre-conciliar liturgical movement nor the Second Vatican Council itself ever explicitly anticipated, let alone contemplated, the abolition of the Rogation Days, prior to their disappearance in Paul VI's 1969 liturgical calendar. There was, admittedly, in certain quarters a view (which one might charitably label "liturgical puritanism") that the Rogation Days were not "in harmony with the spirit of Easter," and there were in fact proposals to eliminate some and transfer others (cf. the 19th meeting of the Pontifical Committee for the Reform of the Sacred Liturgy, April 29, 1952). More modestly, the 1960 rubrical reform of Pope Saint John XXIII, while making no change regarding April 25, made the "Lesser Litanies" optional in private recitation of the Office and gave Local Ordinaries the faulty of transferring them to three other successive days which might seem more suitable locally (General Rubrics, 87, 90). I guess that proved to be the proverbial camel's nose under the proverbial tent!
On the other hand, expressing a deeper spirit and sense of the 20th-century liturgical movement, the esteemed Pius Parsch wrote: "The four Rogation Days have preserved the main elements of this venerable rite [the ancient Roman stational observance], an observance that we should respect and foster. for we should pray both perseveringly and in common, since special efficacy and power is attached to such prayer."
On the other hand, expressing a deeper spirit and sense of the 20th-century liturgical movement, the esteemed Pius Parsch wrote: "The four Rogation Days have preserved the main elements of this venerable rite [the ancient Roman stational observance], an observance that we should respect and foster. for we should pray both perseveringly and in common, since special efficacy and power is attached to such prayer."
No less than the calamities of Pope Gregory the Great's time, climate change and its associated environmental and other woes seriously threaten the planet itself, and particularly some of the planet's most vulnerable populations. Furthermore, since I first wrote about this on this site over a decade ago, the U.S. has definitively retreated from even recognizing, let alone responding effectively to, the challenges of climate change and environmental degradation. The case for recovering the sensibility underlying the Rogation Days, for recovering what the Roman liturgy lightly discarded some 57 years ago, for re-embracing a Christianized Robigalia, is, if anything, even more obvious than it was then!
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