Today is the first day of the penitential observance known as the Lesser Rogations, and also, by coincidence, the feast of St Mamertus, bishop of Vienne in France, who first instituted them around the year 470 A.D. His successor but one, St Avitus, has left us a sermon on the Rogations, in which he describes the reason why they were instituted, in the wake of a series of public calamities.
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