The other week I had the opportunity to once again visit the small hilltop town of Orvieto, Italy, shortly before the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, also known as the Feast of Corpus Christi, which we celebrated last Sunday. This feast was instituted for the Universal Church in 1264 by Pope Urban IV, who was at that time living in Orvieto.

In the Encyclical Mediator Dei, the Venerable Pius XII writes that "the Church is without question a living organism, and as an organism, in respect of the sacred liturgy also, she grows, matures, develops, adapts and accommodates herself to temporal needs and circumstances, provided only that the integrity of her doctrine be safeguarded" (no. 59).

In the Creed professed at Mass, we affirm our belief in the Holy Spirit, "the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son .... " At once the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, eternally proceeding from both, the Holy Spirit is-as articulated by St. Augustine-the mutual love of the Father and Son. "The Holy Spirit is a certain unutterable communion of the Father and the Son."

In the solemn celebration of Pentecost, we are invited to profess our faith in the presence and in the action of the Holy Spirit and to invoke His outpouring upon us, upon the Church, and upon the whole world. With special intensity, let us make our own the Church's invocation: Veni, Sancte Spiritus! It is such a simple and spontaneous invocation, yet also extraordinarily profound, which came first of all from the heart of Christ. The Spirit is indeed the gift that Jesus asked and continues to ask of His Father for His friends: the first and principal gift that He obtained for us through His Resurrection and Ascension into heaven.

Our Paschal Candle for this year is hand-decorated by a small Catholic artist based in Washington state. The primary artwork on the candle depicts the scene of John baptizing Jesus in the Jordan River from Matthew 3.

Today, on Mother's Day, we honor our mothers, but an often-overlooked mother to us all is the bride of Christ: Holy Mother Church. The apostles in their writings routinely likened the relationship between Christ and His Church to that of the groom and his bride. Just as God is the father of creation and exercises His authority over it, the Church, as the bride of Christ and flowing forth from Him, is the mother of creation and exercises her nurturing care and oversight of what has been entrusted to her by Him.

The Easter Proclamation, known as the Exsultet, a beautiful poem which is sung at the start of the Easter Vigil Mass to the praise of the Paschal Candle (a symbol of Christ), contains many references filled with deep theological symbolism, but one in particular stands out as rather odd. This reference is "O certe necessárium Adæ peccátum, quod Christi morte délétum est! O felix culpa, quæ talem ac tantum méruit habére Redemptórem!", often rendered in English as "O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the Death of Christ! O happy fault, that earned for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer!".