I burn in the sun and the moon and the stars. The secret Life of Me breathes in the wind and holds all things together soulfully.
—Hildegard of Bingen, Book of Divine Works 1.1.2
CAC affiliate faculty member Carmen Acevedo Butcher describes the extraordinary life of Hildegard of Bingen:
Between the summer of 1098 and the autumn of 1179, a remarkable German woman lived eighty-one years at a time when half that long was considered a full life. The Über-multitasking Frau, this Benedictine nun founded two convents; organized the first-ever public preaching tours conducted by a woman; authored nearly four hundred bold letters to popes, emperors, abbesses, abbots, monks, nuns, and laypeople; worked as healer, naturalist, botanist, dietary specialist, and exorcist; composed daring music; crafted poetry with staying power; wrote the first surviving sung morality play; and spent decades writing three compelling theological works. Meet the incomparable Hildegard of Bingen. Her long resume is impressive in any age, but it pales when compared with her life, which she considered her best divine offering. [1]
Acevedo Butcher highlights Hildegard’s passion for music as a pathway to God:
A multi-faceted artist, Hildegard was not only an author and a talented visual designer, but a musician of note. Her allegiance to God through her music is one of the strongest refrains in her life. She believed music was necessary for salvation, because it was the best representation of the state of humanity before the Fall. If a person wanted to know what it felt like to be alive before the Fall, Hildegard believed holy music could take you there, as she writes in her famous letter to the Prelates of Mainz:
Music stirs our hearts and engages our souls in ways we can’t describe. When this happens, we are taken beyond our earthly banishment back to the divine melody Adam knew when he sang with the angels, when he was whole in God, before his exile. In fact, before Adam refused God’s fragrant flower of obedience, his voice was the best on earth, because he was made by God’s green thumb, who is the Holy Spirit. And if Adam had never lost the harmony God first gave him, the mortal fragilities that we all possess today could never have survived hearing the booming resonance of that original voice. [2]
Hildegard’s songs often praised God’s presence in creation:
O Holy Power who forged the Way for us!
You penetrate all in heaven and earth and even down below.
You’re everything in One.
Through You, clouds billow and roll and winds fly!
Seeds drip juice,
springs bubble into brooks, and
spring’s refreshing greens flow—through You—over all the earth!
You also lead my spirit into Fullness.
Holy Power, blow wisdom in my soul and—with your wisdom—Joy! [3]
References:
[1] Carmen Acevedo Butcher, St. Hildegard of Bingen: Doctor of the Church; A Spiritual Reader (Paraclete Press, 2013), 1–2.
[2] Acevedo Butcher, St. Hildegard, 12–13.
[3] Carmen Acevedo Butcher, Incandescence: 365 Readings with Women Mystics (Paraclete Press, 2005), 131. Acevedo Butcher’s verse translates and modernizes Hildegard’s Sequence O ignis Spiritus paracliti [O fire of the Spirit].
Image credit and inspiration: Augustin Fernandez, Untitled (detail), 2020, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. With the Rhineland mystics, we share the ability to gaze with love at the plants of the earth, appreciating the food we eat, and across time and place, we are invited to step through the doorway into the Great Mystery.
Story from Our Community:
As an ordinary Australian Franciscan, I always looked up to people who have had strong and memorable experiences during prayer. I didn’t consider myself someone with a particularly strong spiritual inner life. Still, following the Daily Meditations on Mysticism, I am becoming more conscious of my own particular relationship with God. I realize that I live with an awareness of the Spirit’s presence within me nearly all the time. We each are a part of a wonderful life in God that expresses itself differently in each of us. Let’s all rejoice in the wonder of God’s love.
—Sue S.
