Fr Matthew Reese

“But God had created human beings to be full of light so that they could see the radiance of pure ether and hear the songs of angels. He had clothed them in such radiance that they shone with the splendor of it. But all this was lost when man disobeyed God’s commandment and so caused nature to fall with him. Yet the natural elements retained a glimmering of their former pristine position, which human sin could not destroy completely. For which reason people should retain a glimmering of their knowledge of God.” —The Book of Life’s Merits, Hildegard of Bingen (in Celebrating the Saints: Devotional Readings for Saints’ Days). 

At today’s noonday Eucharist, we will commemorate Hildegard of Bingen, Virgin and Doctor, who died on this day in 1179. Hildegard was beatified in 1326, but she wasn’t fully canonized in the Roman Catholic Church until 2012. (She finally got her due on our own calendar a little earlier, in 1994).

686 years! Why such a wait?

Part of it might just be administrative bad luck.

Hildegard’s cause was advanced in a time when the Church was just developing the formal procedures for canonization. But I think it probably had more to do with people’s failure of imagination.

Hildegard was such an extraordinary Christian, such an extraordinary human being, that she continues to defy easy classification. We see this in her various “appellations:” “Virgin and Doctor,” “Abbess of Bingen,” “Mystic and Scholar.” She was all of these things and more: poet, composer, dramatist, theologian, preacher, writer, counselor of popes and emperors.

Hildegard’s ecstatic visions were overpowering––blinding flashes of light, sharp pains, periods of unconsciousness. But she took these experiences and explicated them with extraordinary rigor, producing volumes of beautifully illuminated mystical theology.

Light suffuses her work, and Hildegard has something to teach us about that light which cannot be hid, that Light of the World which is the person of Christ Jesus. Even in our fallen state, she reminds us, a glimmer of God’s radiant glory shines within every human being. If we let ourselves look for it, we will find it daily in the lives of others. But we need not have towering visions of the celestial glory to still find it within ourselves.

Today, let us follow Hildegard’s example, and pause to consider the glimmer of God in our own lives, and in our very selves.

Hildegard, pray for us.

—Fr Matthew