Saint Hildegard of Bingen

This is the second time I've written about this Saint. An earlier version of this appeared in the March 5, 2023 bulletin for St. Vincent Ferrer, Delray Beach, FL. This version is due to be published in the St. Vincent Ferrer bulletin for May 26, 2024 as part of a series on Doctors of the Church..

In October 7, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI issued an Apostolic Letter entitled “Proclaiming Saint Hildegard of Bingen, professed nun of the Order of Saint Benedict, a Doctor of the Universal Church.” He began that letter with these words: “A ’light for her people and her time’: in these words Blessed John Paul II, my Venerable Predecessor, described Saint Hildegard of Bingen in 1979, on the occasion of the eight-hundredth anniversary of the death of this German mystic. This great woman truly stands out crystal clear against the horizon of history for her holiness of life and the originality of her teaching. And, as with every authentic human and theological experience, her authority reaches far beyond the confines of a single epoch or society; despite the distance of time and culture, her thought has proven to be of lasting relevance.”

Saint Hildegard of Bingen is one of the just four females who have been named as Doctor of the Church. She was born in 1098, and is known as writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, and visionary. She is known to have written works in the fields of theology, botany, and medicine. She also wrote peoms, liturgical hymns and antiphons theological, botanical, and medicinal works,[ In fact, more of her chants survive to this day than that of any other composer of the Middle Ages – and, she wrote both music and lyrics.

Her visions are reported to have begun when she was very young – at least one source says she was just three years old. Here, in her own words:  From my early childhood, before my bones, nerves, and veins were fully strengthened, I have always seen this vision in my soul, even to the present time when I am more than seventy years old. In this vision, my soul, as God would have it, rises up high into the vault of heaven and into the changing sky and spreads itself out among different peoples, although they are far away from me in distant lands and places. And because I see them this way in my soul, I observe them in accord with the shifting of clouds and other created things.” (Newman, Barbara. "Hildegard of Bingen: Visions and Validation." Church History 54, no. 2 (1985): 163–75)

 In his Apostolic Letter, Pope Benedict went on to say “In her many writings Hildegard dedicated herself exclusively to explaining divine revelation and making God known in the clarity of his love. Hildegard’s teaching is considered eminent both for its depth, the correctness of its interpretation, and the originality of its views. The texts she produced are refreshing in their authentic “intellectual charity” and emphasize the power of penetration and comprehensiveness of her contemplation of the mystery of the Blessed Trinity, the Incarnation, the Church, humanity and nature as God’s creation, to be appreciated and respected.”

 Books by and about St. Hildegard are readily available for Amazon Kindle. So are copies of her music. One quote of her that I find particularly inspiring is this: “Dare to declare who you are. It is not far from the shores of silence to the boundaries of speech. The path is not long, but the way is deep. You must not only walk there, you must be prepared to leap.”