The Fifth Sunday after Easter, sometimes called Rogation Sunday in older Anglican usage because the Rogation Days for blessing fields and praying for harvest follow in the next week, stands between the great gift of the Resurrection and the coming of Ascension Day. Its Collect is a model of evangelical simplicity: O Lord, from whom all good things do come, grant to us thy humble servants that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that are good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same. The petition recognises that good thinking and good doing are both gifts of God — not merely the exercise of human moral effort.

The appointed Epistle from James 1 continues the Easter season's reflection on faith lived in action: be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. Faith that does not issue in action is self-deception. James's directness is not a rival to the Pauline doctrine of grace but its necessary complement: the same grace that justifies also transforms, so that the one who has received every good gift from the Father of lights is freed to visit the fatherless and widows and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

The appointed Gospel from John 16 returns to the Upper Room Discourse, where our Lord speaks of the new mode of prayer that his resurrection and ascension will make possible: Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name. The disciples are being prepared not for Christ's absence but for a new and deeper intimacy with the Father — prayer offered in the name of the Son and heard by the Father who loves those who love the Son.