Last week, I was inspired by both the Exsultet, sung by the deacon during the Vigil of Easter with its imagery of bees, and the survival of the beehives atop the roof of the Notre-Dame Cathedral’s sacristy. These orderly little creatures, which have sparked the imaginations of Holy Church’s best writers through the centuries, supply yet another apian nexus in the Collect for the Third Sunday of Easter in the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite.
Sunday’s Collect is one of those many prayers cobbled up for the Novus Ordo by scholars from pieces of ancient prayers. It is not without a measure of elegance:
