Rogation Day III. The Rogation Days end not with a request but a recognition. The one for whom we are asking is the one in whom all things hold together. He ascends tomorrow that he might fill all things, including our barns, our tables, and our daily bread.
Rogation Day II. "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." The treasure does not follow the heart. The heart follows the treasure. What we accumulate, protect, and return to; that is where our heart actually is, regardless of what we say it is.
"The seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how." Mark 4:27. The farmer does not make the seed grow. He cannot watch it happen and intervene. He scatters, sleeps, and in the morning there is a blade where yesterday there was bare ground. Rogation Day I: the growth is in God's hands, not ours.
Jesus says abide in me; not a dramatic command, just stay connected. The branch doesn't produce fruit by trying harder. It produces fruit by staying on the vine. Apart from him we can do nothing. But abide in him, and the fruit comes. And at the end of it all: our joy will be full.
On the night before the crucifixion, Jesus told his disciples: I am the way, the truth, and the life. Thomas asked for directions. Jesus gave him a person. The way is not a method or a map — it is Jesus himself. Wide open to anyone who comes through him.
Philip and James remind us that some Christian faithfulness is visible and much of it is hidden. God sees both, gives grace and strength, and calls ordinary people to bear witness to Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life.