Sundays at All Hallows (May 10, 2026)
Welcome to Sundays at All Hallows. This Sunday, Fifth Sunday after Easter, or the Sixth Sunday of Easter, depending upon whether a church is following the traditional one-year lectionary or the three-year Revised Common Lectionary, is Rogation Sunday and marks the beginning of Rogationtide, a brief season of four days, counting Rogation Sunday, which precedes Ascension Day. Among the customs associated with Rogationtide, are fasting and abstinence in preparation for Ascension Day, solemn processions through the community during which the Great Litany was recited or sung, the blessing of the farmers’ crops, and the beating of the bounds, which in its oldest form entailed showing the boys of the parish the boundary markers of the parish and giving them a good drubbing so they didn’t forget them. If the boundary marker was a pond, river, or stream, they were thrown into the water. These customs whose introduction in England goes as far back as the seventh century, survived the Reformation...
