Responsory for the Virgin: Hildegard of Bingen

“O sweetest branch,
you bloom from Jesse’s stock!
How great the mighty power,
that divinity
upon a daughter’s beauty gazed—
an eagle turns his eye
into the sun:

As Heaven’s Father tended to the Virgin’s splendor
when he willed his Word
in her to be incarnate.

For in God’s mystic mystery,
the Virgin’s mind illuminéd,
the flower bright—a wonder!—
forth from that Virgin
sprung:

As Heaven’s Father tended to the Virgin’s splendor
when he willed his Word
in her to be incarnate.”