September 17, Feast of Hildegard of Bingen, Benedictine abbess, Doctor of the Church
Hildegard of Bingen was born in the Rhineland and was promised to God in religious profession at birth. But she was no ordinary novice from a wealthy medieval family. She was unusually spiritual, uncannily brilliant, and formidably strong. Hildegard was a writer, a musician, a scientist, a preacher, and a religious visionary. She compiled encyclopedias, reported intellectual visions, preached church reform, and acted as director to many of the heads of Europe.
Hildegard brought knowledge to good will. She didn’t simply talk charming talk; rather, she studied the great ideas of the time, wrestled with the great questions of the age, and approached all of them with clarity of soul and depth of mind. She understood what others never even thought to question, and she wrote her vision of life, cosmology creation, and grace in treatises on the spiritual life. She scolded kings and confronted bishops who attempted to bring her spirit under the yoke of a lesser law than the one inscribed in her heart by the God whose mind she plumbed for Truth and Justice.
Her spiritual life is about more than piety or regular adherence to religious practices. To be truly spiritual we must, as Benedict of Nursia counsels in his ancient monastic Rule, give ourselves over to the “school of God’s service.” We need to bring knowledge to virtue so that our spirituality does not become bad theology. A commitment to knowledge is what provides us with the tools we need to make judgments that are true and kind, compassionate and just. The knowledge of God makes us free of the kind of guilt and scrupulosity, compulsion and righteousness that tempt us to put more effort into maintaining institutions than plumbing God’s mysteries in our own lives.
In the spirit of Hildegard may we all pursue a love for the intellectual life and the stamina to pursue it so that, filled with God’s truth, we may never become enamored of anything less in life.
—from Life Ablaze: A Woman’s Novena by Joan Chittister, OSB (Sheed & Ward)
