Gregorian Chant and Thomas Luis Victoria - O Magnum Mysterium

O great mystery
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see God born
lying in a manger!
O blessed is the Virgin, whose womb
was worthy to bear Christ the Lord.
Hail Mary, full of grace: the Lord is with you.
Blessed is the Virgin whose womb
was worthy to bear Christ the Lord.
Alleluia!

Thinking about this while looking for a setting to post, I'd imagine it's not easy for us to imagine what the story was like to the middle-eastern peasants, laborers and poor folk who first heard it.  God born to a Jewish peasant in a stable, put in a feed stand to sleep among the cattle and donkeys. , Not to mention what it would have seemed like to upper class people who, unlike most of those today would have been only somewhat removed from the very day reality of manure, especially in a place and time when bedding wouldn't be nearly as plentiful as it would be with even mechanical harvesting that didn't become possible till the 19th century.  And God, no less, chose to be incarnated under about the most  unsanitary, dangerous and unpleasant conditions available.  I can imagine what a Roman of the class of Tacitus must have thought of it.  Not to mention that the mother was a Jewish girl.   Its implausibility makes it miraculous that a movement that believed that survived the ridicule and seeming sheer implausibility of it.  It wasn't what any human would choose for their child or themselves voluntarily and God would certainly have had choices.  That same reality must have informed the author of what was to be one of the most popular responsories in the liturgy as well as the generation after generation of agrarian people who heard it. Or maybe it seems that way to us because modern, westerners just don't get the same thing someone growing up with animals would understand about what a profound statement about the worth of even the most destitute people are, not to mention the animals who were the first witnesses to that incarnation.  It must have had a profound meaning to them that is lost on people whose only experience of animals is limited to the family dog or cat, though maybe with a little imagination they could imagine some of it.

Here's what's probably the most well known setting of it, by one of the greatest of composers, also a priest, Tomas Luis Victoria.

The Sixteen
Harry Christophers, director