As Rita Ferrone writes in the latest issue of Commonweal, the new translation of the Easter Proclamation will bring back the praise for "mother bee." What's all this about bees, you ask? Read "Virgil & the Vigil" for the details.You won't hear anything about bees tonight -- and probably not till 2011 at the earliest. But the Exsultet is still very beautiful, and worth meditating over, even if you're not on your way to tonight's Great Vigil. If you'll be keeping vigil at home on this "most blessed of all nights," here's a link to the text of the Proclamation from that redoubtable repository of liturgical texts, Wikipedia.

Mollie Wilson O’​Reilly is editor-at-large and columnist at Commonweal.

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