Justin Appel
Dear Friends,
Today’s Old Testament reading from the Daily Office Lectionary is a passage from Proverbs 4:7-18, a passage about wisdom, of the need to acquire it and to live according to it.
This passage, traditionally ascribed to King Solomon, depicts wisdom as a woman giving guidance and as a way one follows through life—in contrast to the way of foolishness. In this passage, wisdom guides the reader into the right way through good decisions: we come closer to God when we heed the call of wisdom and “embrace her” through virtuous action.
Hildegard von Bingen, a 12th-century abbess and Doctor of the Church, wrote music that extolled wisdom, which she associated here with the “energy of God,” depicting it as an angelic figure with three wings. One wing “soars in the heaven,” while the second “sweeps the earth,” and the third “flies all around us.” The Trinitarian picture seems clear enough.
Her music, including this Antiphon for Divine Wisdom (O Virtus Sapientiae) has become wildly popular, as a glance at the title on YouTube reveals. I suppose there are reasons why her music might appeal to Christians, New Age proponents, and generally over-stressed Capitalists in one go.
Her music, like the mystical quality of her poetic writings suggest, to my mind, a more ancient understanding of the created order, one in which created bodies (including people) exist in harmonious relationship to each other and to their creator. In this system, wisdom is from God, whether understood as one of God’s energies (an Eastern Christian concept) or with Jesus, who in his incarnation reveals God to us creatures.
I think one senses this wholeness in Hildegard’s music, the idea that wisdom urges a return to God, who proceeds all things and in whom all things hold together (Colossians 1:17).
Here are several versions of O Virtus Sapientiae for you to hear:
Armonico Consort (sung over a drone)
Kronos Quartet (played on strings)
Yours in Christ,
—Justin