Hildegard of Bingen, Doctor of the Church lived in the 14th century. She is an ever fresh voice in our spiritual search. She had a profound role in shaping Christianity. Hildegard descended from the language of academia to help us sense and experience and realize the searing presence of God. She revealed God – with – us in our own lives. She helps us to explore who God is and who we are; how we choose to respond to Divine Love. She did not have access to theological training, yet she is an excellent model for doing theology. She had a keen eye for perceiving the spiritual emptiness of scholastic theology. She brought the head and the heart to theology. She was an exceptional teacher, absorbed in Scripture, living the Christian life in creative ways. She wrote with passion and insight, leaving us living, breathing documents intended to be read and pondered anew. We are drawn to her spirituality. Her wisdom speaks to our hearts.

Hildegard of Bingen

The experiential base of her spirituality attracts us. She is very much focused on the human Jesus. She is optimistic and filled with hope and trust. We encounter a freshness in her language and imagery. She trusts her experience. She challenges us to stand tall – to appreciate we are women of the Spirit. She invites us to attend with reverence to the ways in which God is operating in our lives, to trust in these ways and to be emboldened to live them out. Hildegard is a source of inspiration and pride in the long, buried heritage of strong, holy, intelligent women. Her theology emerges from the crucible of engaging the living God. She follows in a long line of Gospel women – Mary of Nazareth, Mary of Magdalene, Phoebe, Mary and Martha, Lydia, Priscilla, Lois, Eunice and Tabitha. She calls us to an awakening to a felt sense of the presence of God. Hildegard grappled with the same questions we do:

• Do I see the human person as primarily graced?
• What are my favourite images of God?
• How can I pray better?
• How does the Holy Spirit touch my life?
• What feeds the wellsprings of my faith?
• Do I see my role in the Church?
• Is God present in the world?
• What are my favourite biblical texts?
• What are my most pressing spiritual needs?
• Am I growing, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually?
• What spiritual practices attract me?
• What new faith questions have I?

Hildegard was a Renaissance woman – a woman of her time in every way. Yet she transcends her time. She lures us to become fully human, made in God’s image and called to a creative and courageous life of Gospel Love. Her openness to the Divine and her prophetic spirit are seen throughout her writings. She has a keen sacramental consciousness – all reality glows with the presence of God. She composed new texts and melodies to enhance the liturgical life of her monastery. She transformed traditions. She worked for the renewal of the Church. Hildegard reminds us of the inter connectedness of all things in God. God’s unity embraces the cosmos. We are all on a journey together. She confronts us, motivates us, encourages us. She was a leader, a composer, a performer of drama, music and poetry. She gave witness and voice to her faith.

Hildegard challenges our planetary citizenship. She brought religion beyond the magical to the mystical. She was bright, bold, fearless and confident of her place in God’s creation. She speaks to core issues. She called for a marriage of science and spirituality. We are to speak to our mystical intuition. She called for a renewal of Wisdom and for an awakening of the kind of creativity she refers to as “greening power”, leading to an honouring of Mother Earth. She calls for an emergence of the Divine Feminine to balance a healthy sacred masculine, to stand up to Patriarchy in religion, government and in all places of power. Hildegard recognised that when women come into their own there will be an end to the power – over dynamics that have blighted our planet.

Hildegard asks us to love life. She espouses the Cosmic Christ, which is the God – Presence in every created being in the universe. She calls for an expansion of consciousness that a renewed cosmology can bring. She is truly a herald of good news to the tired soul. She takes us to the depths of prayer. Something happens to your soul when you listen to her music, meditate on her visions, her mandalas, her paintings. She calls us to true community, to waken up to the Divine. Reading Hildegard will trigger experiences in one’s soul that will awaken, refresh and empower, putting us in touch with our experience of the Divine. Divinity is beyond all names she tells us. She experiences God in the depths of life. She believed that we are all born in “in original wisdom”. It is our life’s task to develop this wisdom and practice it and put it to work. She calls us “to rise from our sleep” and live “with passion” in order that we might contribute to “making the Cosmic Wheel go round”. She wants a global renaissance so that there can emerge an intelligent, ecumenical, justice – orientated, scientifically respectful, creative, green spirituality. Hildegard sang “all of creation is a symphony of joy and jubilation”. She preached about the web of life that all creation shares and warned that the earth must not be injured. She calls us all “co – creators with God”. She developed a theology of the Holy Spirit and of the Cosmic Christ long before Teilhard de Chardin. She gave us a model by which to reinvent education by celebrating the union of creativity and wisdom. Christ was for her the healing presence inside all of us and whose primary work is compassion. Hildegard saw Jesus as the one with whom we can express the warm, emotive side of our personalities and we can see Christ as the Bridegroom of the soul. The spiritual life is a relationship with Christ in his humanity. Our humanity is in Christ.

As an adult Hildegard painted 36 of her visions. She invented the first full Morality Play. She heard angels singing and put the songs to music. She wrote the first opera of the west, 300 years before the great composers. Her music takes us to ever deeper and loftier realms of divine experience. She brings to life the person and teachings of Jesus with music, poetry, theology, opera, medicine, letters, paintings and visions. She has been declared Saint and Doctor of the Church. She dared to call herself a prophet like Ezekiel and Daniel and compares herself to David. She speaks to women everywhere. Hildegard takes us to the “cave of our hearts”. The “8-9house of Wisdom” she tells us wells in each one of us. She teaches us praise for the earth, for our powers of co – creativity and co – creation. She called herself the true “witness of truth and the speaking and not – being – silent God”.

To have being is to be a temple of God. Hildegard urges us to find our voice, to be prophets and truth tellers. We are all called to live out our awakening. This is Incarnation at work. There is so much praise going on in the world, Hildegard tells us, if we only listen. We need to be still enough inside to observe the beauty, the goodness, the gladness that is praiseworthy. Enchantment surrounds us. Hildegard celebrates the glory, the radiance, the living light in all creatures.

“There is no creature that does not have radiance,
Be it greenness or seed, blossom or beauty.
It could not be creation without it”.

At the heart of the universe is the Trinity. For Hildegard God is light, “a true light that gives light to all lights. Light is the secret Presence of the Divine. Light and Love bind us to each other. Hildegard defends our earth, a single, interconnected eco – system, a network of eco – systems.

I am the one whose praise echoes on high
I adorn all the earth
I am the breeze that nurtures all things green
I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits
I am led by the spirit to feed the purest streams
I am the rain coming from the dew
That causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life
I call forth tears, the aroma of holy work”.

“Our faith is about praise, an inner experience of the soul. God hugs you.You are encircled by the arms of the mystery of God”.

Hildegard took on Popes, Abbots and Politicians. Imagine if Hildegard lived today? Imagine if she saw the disappearance of species, climate change, erosion of rainforests?

  “Invisible life that sustains all,
I awaken to everything.
Every waft of air.
The air is life, greening and blossoming.
The waters flow with life.
The moon when waning is again rekindled by the sun, waxing with
life once more”.

Hildegard had her dark days too.

    “O Mother, where are you?
I would suffer pain more lightly
If I had not felt the deep
Pleasure of your presence earlier
Where is your help now”?
“Now is a time for remembering goodness”

She saw herself as a mere instrument being played by the Holy Spirit. Her path was one of compassion and justice – a prophetic path. Hildegard talks about us being encircled by mystery of God.

“I am completely and utterly in God”.

No matter how sick our bodies are, our souls are always whole. Prayer, contemplation and meditation affect healing.  The mystic is one who falls in love with the world. Hildegard is on fire with the love of creation. Her theology is Creation Spirituality – the oldest tradition in the Bible – the tradition of Jesus and the great mystics of the Church. We begin with awe, wonder, gratitude and delight. We fall in love with creation. Then we move to the unknown, to silence, darkness and mystery.

“No one can fully grasp the Godhead”.

But she tells us,

“God carries us forever in the Divine Providence and does not forget us”.

Time and again, Hildegard invokes circle imagery for divinity. When Hildegard was made Doctor of the Church she brings with her the Divine Feminine.

“As life and as the Goddess in all of nature,
As the God within of mysticism,
As the Motherhood of God,
As Wisdom,
As the circle that is Divine,
As Love, the one who made everything,
As the Holy Spirit,
As the love of Mother Earth,
As the work of compassion,
As igniting Wisdom,
As the keeper of the creative fire”.

Throughout her life, Hildegard retained her ability to be surprised, to be amazed at the love God has for each of us.

“God made the form of woman to be the mirror of his beauty “.
 “Woman is called to reveal the hidden God,
By giving him birth,
We are called to be Mothers of God.
Just as God is truly Father
So also is God truly our Mother”.

All her life Hildegard was a teacher of awe and wonder and had an intense involvement with life. She gave herself wholeheartedly to the enterprise of life – giving love. She rejuvenates our ability to laugh, to weep, to dance and sing and celebrate.

“Be not lax in celebrating,
Be not lazy in festive service of God “.

Hildegard is a strong model of womanhood. She opened herself passionately to the shattering presence of God’s intense love. She was driven by passion like poets, musicians, scientists and lovers. She urges us to live with passionate attention and engagement. She challenges us to become involved with all our senses and enter into a passionate, all – consuming relationship with God. She compares the spiritual life to nature – bright sun, dark clouds, light of day, moon of night. She associates greening with the Holy Spirit. She calls us to the effective and passionate character of the spiritual life.
We see in her writings a graceful harmony between the language of the head and the heart. She reminds us that the compassion of God is to bear fruit in our compassion for the poor, for those who have nothing. The passion for her love affair with God extends to others.

“Let your hearts’ goodwill overflow
So that you will not be among the lost sheep “.
“Sanctify yourself before God
By giving of your substance
To refresh those in want
And God will give you His mercy “.

Hildegard’s visions resulted in a profound transformation of herself. She felt that for her that fidelity to the struggle in the form of a passionate spiritual life bears eternal fruit in intense feelings of joy, thanksgiving and praise. Many saw her as their spiritual mother. She was a woman with a single vision who did not shrink from the prophetic word. She exhorts us to live lives of intense virtue. Her ultimate goal was the praise and glory of God’s activity. She “sings forth God’s secrets” while comparing her own utterances to “the dim sound of a trumpet from the living light”. She has a holistic understanding of the Incarnation and the spiritual life. She strives for a more just world. She stirs us to wonder and joy. She urges us to find God in the passionate dimensions of our lives. She expresses the hopes and fears of our hearts. She invites us to examine our deep emotions in the everyday experiences of our lives, embedded in the spiritual and the mundane. She is a mystical seer who puzzles us and inspires us and enchants us.

I am the yearning for good,
     I ignite the beauty of life,
     I sparkle the waters,
     Trinity you are music,
     You are Life,
     Limitless Love,
     Flooding all, loving all,
     Feather on the breath of God”.

Ann Crowley rsm
South Central Province