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 1263, in the small Italian valley town of Bolsena, a priest named Fr. Peter of Prague had immense doubt about the mystery of transubstantiation, and while celebrating Mass and speaking the Words of Institution: "This is My Body", the Eucharistic Host began to bleed in his hands. This is known as the Eucharistic Miracle of Bolsena, and shortly after it took place, the Corporal cloth onto which the Sacred Host bled was moved to the nearby Cathedral of Orvieto, which is adjacent to the Papal Palace.

Pope Urban commissioned St. Thomas Aquinas to write a series of hymns about the Eucharist to accompany the Mass for this new feast of Corpus Christi. The hymns are rich in symbolism and beautiful poetry, so I enjoin you to prayerfully read through and meditate on Aquinas' Adoro te Devote, translated into English by Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ:

1 Godhead here in hiding whom I do adore / Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more. / See, Lord, at thy service low lies here a heart / Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.

2 Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived; / How says trusty hearing? that shall be believed; / What God's Son has told me, take for truth I do; / Truth himself speaks truly, or there's nothing true.

3 On the cross thy godhead made no sign to men; / Here thy very manhood steals from human ken: / Both are my confession, both are my belief, / And I pray the prayer made by the dying thief.

4 l am not like Thomas, wounds I cannot see, / But I plainly call thee Lord and God as he: / This faith each day deeper be my holding of, / Daily make me harder hope and dearer love.

5 0 thou, our reminder of the Crucified, / Living Bread, the life of us for whom he died, / Lend this life to me, then; feed and feast my mind, / There be thou the sweetness man was meant to find.

6 Like what tender tales tell of the Pelican, / Bathe me, Jesus Lord, in what thy bosom ran- / Blood that but one drop of has the pow'r to win / All the world forgiveness of its world of sin.

7 Jesus whom I look at shrouded here below, / I beseech thee, send me what I thirst for so, / Some day to gaze on thee face to face in light / And be blest forever with thy glory's sight.

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