Chorus to Groom: Who is she, who ascends through the desert, like a staff of smoke from the aromatics of myrrh, and frankincense, and every powder of the perfumer?
And the Lord said to Moses: "Take to yourself aromatics: stacte, and onycha, galbanum of sweet odor, and the clearest frankincense, all these shall be of equal weight.
Behold, I am accomplishing new things. And presently, they will spring forth. With certainty, you will know them. I will make a way in the desert, and rivers in an impassible place.
"Go, and cry out to the ears of Jerusalem, saying: Thus says the Lord: I have remembered you, taking pity on your youth and on the charity of your betrothal, when you followed me into the desert, into a land which is not sown.
I discovered Israel like grapes in the desert. Like the first fruits of the fig tree, I saw their fathers on the end of its branches. But they went in to Baal-peor, and they have been estranged by intermingling, and they have became abominable, just like the things that they chose to love.
And entering the home, they found the boy with his mother Mary. And so, falling prostrate, they adored him. And opening their treasures, they offered him gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
And you shall remember the entire journey along which the Lord your God led you, for forty years through the desert, to afflict you, and to test you, and to make known the things that were turning in your soul, whether or not you would keep his commandments.
But I have everything in abundance. I have been filled up, having received from Epaphroditus the things that you sent; this is an odor of sweetness, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God.
And the two wings of a great eagle were given to the woman, so that she might fly away, into the desert, to her place, where she is being nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent.
And the woman fled into solitude, where a place was being held ready by God, so that they might pasture her in that place for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.
and of cinnamon and black cardamom, and of fragrances and ointments and incense, and of wine and oil and fine flour and wheat, and of beasts of burden and sheep and horses and four-wheeled wagons, and of slaves and the souls of men.
And when he had opened the book, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each having stringed instruments, as well as golden bowls full of fragrances, which are the prayers of the saints.