Excerpt from
The Windows of Faith
Prayers of St. Hildegard
Edited by Walburga Storch, O.S.B.; Translated by Linda M. Maloney
© The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced by any means, without the written permission of The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321.
A translation of Gebete der Heiligen Hildegard. An den Fenstern des Glaubens, published by Pattloch Verlag, Augsburg, 1991.
Foreword
I was happy to respond to Pattloch Verlag’s request to collect the prayers of St. Hildegard because these texts, scattered throughout her major theological works, are especially appealing to us today. In their honesty and simplicity they reveal the heart of the saint and reflect the inner stages through which a human being passes on its pilgrimage from God to God.
Each of us has a history, and our lives are a constant movement of ascent and descent through light and darkness, joy and suffering. I have attempted to give expression to this movement through a corresponding sequence of prayers, and I have given each prayer a title indicating its theme.
"Bis orat qui cantat": to sing is to pray twice, as St. Augustine said. Prior Caecilia Bonn suggested that I include some of Hildegard’s challenging song texts in this little book. Sister Caecilia has studied the work of our great patroness longer than I, and I am grateful to her for her helpful suggestions and support in giving verbal shape to these "sung prayers." I hope that her introduction to this prayerbook will lure many people toward the "windows of faith," and may the "Teutonic prophet" prove herself a powerful advocate for her homeland.
Walburga Storch, O.S.B.
Benedictine Abbey of St. Hildegard,
Rüdesheim/Eibingen
Feast of the Epiphany, 1991
Introduction to Hildegard’s Thought World
"How can I project thoughts on someone who passes me in silence?"
Hildegard of Bingen
In the heart’s conversation with God human beings reveal their personalities at the deepest and most profoundly authentic level. Here they are entirely themselves and express who they really are. That is why we return again and again to the prayers of the saints, where they show their true faces, where we encounter their personalities at their central core. The prayers of the saints can also be a help to the often tongue-tied people of our age. They give us courage to overcome the speechlessness of our own hearts, so often and so painfully experienced, and they can show us where we stand on the way to the goal of our pilgrimage.
Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) did not leave us a prayerbook in the classic sense, nothing we could call the "history of a soul." In that regard she is different from the great women of the Cistercian order, for example Saint Gertrude the Great or the two Mechtilds of Magdeburg and Hackeborn, who lived just a half century later and represent the high point of medieval mysticism: a new intensity of the German spirit, an expression of bridal ardor and the fiery glow of the divine presence.
Hildegard, who often spoke of herself as "God’s trumpet," was first and primarily a prophet, and she herself felt that calling to be a heavy burden. The God revealed to her did not show her the divine presence in order to draw her God-ward in mystical union, but in order to approach a human listener. Thus while every one of her visions begins with the very personal “I,” that “I” is like a door through which another enters, and that other is God. Hildegard was made a servant of the proclamation of salvation that from the deepest beginnings of the divine plan has been directed to and encompasses the whole human race.
Dialogue between God and the Human
Hildegard’s mystical writings from which the prayers, songs, and texts of this collection are drawn are not meant to present an exclusive dialogue between God and the soul. Instead they address a human person whose physical nature unites her inextricably with the whole of creation and who thereby becomes the epitome of all created things. In this key position between the vertical and the horizontal the human being not only has the task of responding within the conversation God has initiated but is responsible for extending it to all creatures. If human beings truly desire to realize their humanity they must, according to the prophet of the Rhineland, throw themselves into the current of this comprehensive conversation. "Come, let us talk with one another" —that is, we are invited to pray. Prayer thus becomes a dialogue on all levels: dialogue between the Creator and the creature, between human beings, between the human and nature, between the individual and history, between body and soul, between vices and virtues.
The matter of this conversation, inexhaustible and always new, is love. The dialogue between God and the human person arises out of the mutual love of Creator and creature. "Thus all the creature’s obedience is only a desire for the kiss of the Creator who gives to the world everything it needs."
God is self-revealed as "through a window" to the person who looks to God in faith. We need this gaze upward and outward into transcendence if we hope to understand the symbols of creation and of our own being and interpret them rightly. For Hildegard, to have faith means not separating the earthly from the heavenly, for "every creature has a visible and an invisible component. The visible is weak, the invisible strong and vital." Every bit of the this-worldly has its counterpart in a piece of the other-worldly. Faith demolishes the wall of a world closed and locked within itself and opens a window into the divine realm. Therefore to pray means to stand at the window of faith, to see, to hear, to respond and be responsible.
The first part of the prayers of Hildegard here presented contains texts that were not conceived or composed as prayers, but are taken from the flow of her visions. It is true that for that very reason they place no small demands on the reader, for the larger context from which they are taken is not always evident and God, the dialogue partner, does not speak. Nevertheless we hope that they will be especially helpful to people of today who so often find themselves speechless toward God, because they present not a shred of “pious prattle” and expose the bedrock of the human heart.
Wonder, Praise, and Adoration
In the second part of the collection the editor has selected twenty-six poems from the seventy-six spiritual songs of the "prophet of the Rhineland." They are essentially different from the previous prayers because the texts and musical settings were carefully and artistically composed by Hildegard and adapted for liturgical use. Those who know the stormy, dynamic, and emotional music of these songs will sense the Gothic stylistic mood that governs them. The texts themselves were born out of the fire of her visions and can scarcely be bound by meter and rhythm. They are the expressions of wonder, praise, and adoration. Within them the visions are concentrated and the experience of the "intimate knower of God" with God and the world is crystallized.
In order to give the readers of this book some help for deciphering and achieving a deeper understanding of Hildegard’s prayer language, let me address a few focal points of her spirituality.
The Mystery of the Beginning
In the works of this saint there is scarcely a hint of the mysticism of the heart of Jesus and his passion, a mystical movement then in its earliest stages. Hildegard’s gaze was turned to the heart of the Father and Creator who appeared to her "shiningly enthroned." The "Father’s utter kindness" is the focal point of all the dramatic events involving God, the human being, and the world. That is the true home of every human person. Like a tiny, heart-shaped, soiled lump of clay, it rests in the heart of the Father who lovingly cleanses it, cares for it, and adorns it. Out of the heart of our creator we are embraced, kissed, and placed in existence. From this "mystery of the beginning" comes the "fundamental desire for the embrace and kiss, without which we would wither away" that exists in every human being. At the bottom of our hearts, therefore, we can never be rid of the memory of our origin, which is also our end, for God, in the infinity of divine kindness, by creating us becomes our mother. Christ in becoming human became our brother because he received life-giving nourishment from the same source, the "motherly breast" (of the Father).
Therefore nothing is "sweeter" to a human being than to run toward the creator of the universe. "I will follow you because you are my creator." The creature knows that is has grown from and is touched by its creator. Creatures are, in turn, entitled to see, know, touch, and enjoy their God and to rest in the divine embrace. Thus those who pray in the words of Saint Hildegard are conscious of their dignity as creatures. While they can produce nothing good of themselves, by turning to God in prayer they have the entire creative power of their Lord placed at their disposal. Hildegard sees something that is reserved for the vision of the angels who see God face to face: how the heart of the Father breathes forth its innermost power, a divine dynamic (virtutes) that builds up, heals, and averts everything that is chaotic and deadly. In the human being this power becomes virtue and empowers her or him for work in the world. Thus the human being becomes a coworker of God, and in a certain sense a creator: in calling out to the creator in prayer the creature comes to itself and finds itself equipped for its task. Hildegard seems almost to be giving a definition of the human person when she writes: "The created human being is like a call, a cry, a voice. O how pitiful and at the same time wonderful is this voice, because God has adorned these fragile vessels with all the divine wonders under heaven."
The Brokenness of the Human
Face to face with their God, however, human beings not only recognize their dignity but at the same time acknowledge with deep shock the depthless misery of their brokenness, for they "have forgotten their creator." Hildegard avows: "Like ashes and the filth of ashes do I appear to myself in the depth of my soul, and like dust that blows away. I am not worthy to be called human. Great is my fear." And even when she was very old she begged her secretary, Wilbert of Gembloux, "Pray that I may not fall, for even Peter could not stand fast."
Like a stranger driven from his inheritance, homeless and bereft of all joy "in prison and in chains" that is how the sinful human being experiences himself, for he has not only sinned against his Lord but at the same time alienated God’s creation in his own existence and thereby extinguished his own face. This misery of sinful existence appears again and again in a great variety of images in Hildegard’s prayers; it is rooted in forgetfulness of God and a bitter silence. "I behold my wounds." The dignity and misery of the human being: how can we live without betraying the one to the other or being constantly dragged backward and forward, sinners and justified as well? How can we take charge of the artistic work of our Christian life and join the two together? In face of this question Hildegard introduces the strongest and most beautiful tones of her spirituality in speaking of the all-powerful might of repentance. Her works are deeply imbued with the image of the prodigal son returning to the father. Because the themes of repentance and sighing play a great role in her prayers as well we must speak of them at greater length.
The Creative Power of Repentance
"The shining one on the mountain" is, for Hildegard, constantly at work transforming the miry clay, the suppurating wounds, and the broken limbs of the sinner into pearls and precious gems by immersing them in the light of the infinite divine goodness. This is done in the power of the blood of the Son who desires to return those who have gone astray to the Father through his own wounds. But this cannot be accomplished without human effort. Hildegard says that heaven and earth are shaken when a human being pauses on her false course, remembers her creator, looks up to God and begins to speak: "I will arise and return to my Father." Thus conversion begins when a human being becomes aware of her wounds and ceases to hide and deny them. "I seek the wounds of your heart," says the Human One, "show me the wounds of your heart." When we show him our wounds, the Son of God responds by showing us his own. "I will suffer with you in your wounds and so I will give you communion with the Father."
At this moment, by the touch of grace, the sinner makes the crucial step. He turns from himself, awakes as if from sleep, rises eagerly, impelled by the driving force of repentance, and hastens back to the Father. "Therefore I will immediately and unconditionally receive him and deliver him to freedom." In the embrace of God, in the mystery of their origins, human beings come to themselves, escape the slavery of sin and are made whole, not because they have struggled with their own shadows or healed themselves, but because they have run to God. For Hildegard this step toward God is the most important moment of the spiritual life. "I will be with those who comprehend me through true penance. In them I will even wed myself to human filth, because I will purify it."
Thus repentance, for Hildegard, is the true medicine not only for the soul, but for the body as well. Without it all the healing arts can only combat symptoms. Far from loading human beings down with feelings of guilt, repentance instead frees them from the rule of fear. But repentance not only has healing power; on it rest the pillars of the universe: its power moves and alters the life-processes of history and the cosmos. With it "we touch the stars." Through it God brings home the creation that human beings have poisoned.
Sighing for God
In this connection we need to reflect on still another word whose meaning has probably faded for us altogether; nevertheless, it played an important role for Hildegard. It is the spiritual "sigh." Thinking of God and our true home in God and at the same time remembering our wounds gives rise to a penetrating twofold pain: longing for God and the experience of one’s own powerlessness. This torturing pain expresses itself in a sigh and tears human beings away from themselves and toward God. It is thus an important event occurring within both body and soul that counters every kind of repression. "Body and soul make a covenant and express themselves together in a sigh. That is heaven: to lift myself up in the true sighing of desire. In my deep sighing I behold God." No one can "fashion" a sigh, but one can make oneself available for it.
The eighth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans gives us a theology of sighing. Paul describes how all nature sighs and groans in labor pains. So also human beings sigh and groan in awaiting their redemption. But since we do not know how we ought to pray the Spirit prays on our behalf with unutterable sighs, crying out to the Father (Rom 8:22-26). Therefore it is Godself in us who drives us to sighing. Hence Hildegard can say categorically, "whoever lacks the Spirit’s sighing will not believe." That is, such people will not surrender totally, will not allow God to enter into their flesh. In sighing we touch the heart of God, like a child that, after a hard and painful experience, throws itself into its father’s or mother’s lap and clings to them.
Hildegard disputes the possible objection "but if I cannot sigh, that’s just the way it is" by saying: "You are forbidding your soul to weep and sigh and preventing it from seeking help in me. But how can I answer someone whose voice I do not hear? You do not sigh to me any more, and thus you ask nothing of me. Whoever does not sigh for me with longing has forgotten me."
The Works of Virtue
For Hildegard repentance already constitutes the first of the so-called good works. Whenever a person comes to one of life’s crossroads and makes the free decision, each time, to take the homeward road to the creator, he or she follows the way of God’s commandments "as the deer hastens to the spring." For such a person the commandments are not legal prescriptions or ascetic imperatives; she or he finds joy in them, can even "savor" them. In doing good deeds, the works of virtue, a person becomes a coworker with God. The strength for these works comes from the heart of the creator as a bride comes to the bridegroom, and invites the person to loving union whose fruit is the works of virtue. In doing them one glorifies God, comes to oneself, and is able to build up this world and the world to come. Decisiveness is therefore demanded: a person is an existence at the parting of the ways between good and evil. If one fails in the good there is only one alternative: the way of repentance. Everything else belongs to the realm of death.
It is possible that some of Saint Hildegard’s expressions when she speaks of this topic could give the impression of hatred of the body, since for her the decision for the good constitutes a continual struggle against the desires and lusts of the flesh. But with the word "flesh" Hildegard speaks, very much in the biblical sense, of the evil and God-avoiding tendency of fallen human nature. Against this she clearly sets up a positive spirituality of bodiliness that was revolutionary for her time. "As is worthy of the creator, you clothed me with pure flesh . . . spread out the hem of your garment and girded me with the belt of your praise . . . . The soul can do nothing without the body; it needs it in order to express itself fittingly; indeed, the soul takes pleasure in working within the body." Soul and body are thus not rivals struggling against one another; they are born to be partners. Their cooperation is, of course, not without conflicts but for that very reason the two must remain in conversation with one another and care for each other like lovers in order to carry out their work for God. "The aroma of good works streams forth from the body," for a human being is always and entirely embodiedness.
In the House of Glory
The twenty-six songs included in the second part of this collection are undoubtedly some of the "thickest" of Hildegard’s texts. In them all she has said and prayed culminates in marvel, praise, and adoration. In the golden city beyond the window she sees the completed edifice of the infinite goodness of the Father for which believers in this life are to collect and prepare the stones. The golden city, the house of the glory of her Lord becomes her home, and she cries out to Zion her mother. She longs for the sound of the perfected harmony of all things in communion with the choir of angels.
That is why her spiritual songs so often exclaim "O." That is also the reason for the wide-leaping intervals in the notation that shatter the sober discipline and contemplative calm of classic Gregorian choral music. Nevertheless, here again out of the dense fullness of the content flows the clear objectivity of her gaze.
Mary, the Primal Image of Creation and the Church
At the nodal point of heaven and earth, God and the human, Hildegard in her songs again and again encounters Mary, whom the Church’s liturgy eulogizes as the "gate of heaven." The eleven poems to her presented here are among the most precious pearls of Marian hymnody. Eyewitnesses reported, in the canonization documents of Saint Hildegard, that love for Mary surrounded her like a halo when she sang with her sisters in the monastic choir.
These songs are enlivened by a multitude of images that we should simply allow to wash over us. Still, a few guidelines may help us to rediscover Mary in these songs today.
Hildegard is here both poet and theologian. For her the figure of the mother of the Lord displays cosmic features above all. The creator of the world "before all creatures beholds the countenance of the most beautiful of all women, as the eagle looks into the sun." This is a bold image. As in a mirror the creator beholds in Mary the unspoiled and uncorrupted concept of the great divine plan. So she becomes the "embrace of all creation." Therefore Hildegard interprets the wisdom texts of the Old Testament as referring to Mary:
Mary is the dawn, the glowing original matter, the golden foundation of the world as it is filled and penetrated by God. As the second Eve she is the helper from and at the side of the Son of God. She becomes the mother of the living and the original source of life. Certainly Hildegard clearly distances herself from every kind of sentimental or archaic cult of a primal mother. She describes Mary’s uniqueness as the unspoiled existence of model virginity, having nothing to do with ascetic achievement but totally and in its entirety an existence in grace. "Your chastity is glory from God, perfect creation."
The gaze of the poet and singer returns again and again to the body, the fruitful womb of the virgin. The unutterable mystery, the mighty event of the incarnation draws her under its spell. On the very first day of creation God entrusted to the womb of Mary not only the only-begotten, eternal divine Son, but also God’s work of salvation, the Church. There Mary gathers "the members of the lovely body of her son” to a unity. Therefore in the womb of the virgin begin, for Hildegard, the first tones of the perfect symphony of heaven.
But Mary is not only the shining, golden original material of creation, she is also the ultimate womb of all sanctity, the constructive force of life, the life-giving instrument. She reflects the way in which grace perfects nature. The mystery of the Church is thus unveiled in a series of images. Mary and the Church are bound together and mutually revelatory. Mary is the Church in person. The images remain open in both directions. Zion as mother can be either the Church or Mary, and ultimately the motherly love of God.
As the one who is utterly and completely whole Mary is also the mother of the healing arts; in fact she herself is the soothing balm for the wounds of our brokenness after Eve’s fall. Yet she shows her motherly compassion for us in other ways. As the one always and completely filled by the Holy Spirit she stands as a prophet on our path and calls to us again and again, with loud cries, to come out of our ruined state. In the power of the Holy Spirit who continually overshadows Mary and makes her fruitful she becomes the woman who saves the whole human race. The Holy Spirit is for her the "dynamo of the universe and root of creation."
The Holy Spirit as Life-Force
Who is the Holy Spirit of God? In two of her songs Hildegard gives us an answer to this question. She calls the Spirit the Living One, the most intimate impulse and moving force of every life. The Spirit is the "life of life." For Hildegard life has a comprehensive meaning. Concretely and first of all it is creation. "Through you the clouds waft and the breezes blow, stones drip and brooks burst forth from their springs, making green things sprout from the earth." All creation in every one of its processes has to do with the life-giving Spirit of God. Wherever we encounter life we can experience the Spirit’s power and we are moved by God. "Life of the life of all created things, . . . you give life to every form."
But life is also wisdom and understanding. King Solomon preferred the gift of wisdom to all riches and every kind of power. "You continually produce people full of understanding, made glad by the breath of wisdom." In wisdom and understanding the human being is open and able to receive life-creating power from the heart of God in order to make use of it in the world. The Holy Spirit impels us to act, breathes within all our actions, and thus is available for our enjoyment. "Sweetness" is what the spiritual teacher and mystic calls the unutterable that we experience when the breath of God touches us and invites us to love.
The Spirit of God is holy
Through the Spirit "the universe glows and catches fire." The Spirit drives and moves human beings to good works through the “fiery power” that is proper to the Spirit, by means of which human persons are able to build and to heal, through which the Spirit can overcome everything that sets itself against life. The Holy Spirit is a pure source of water and a mirror in which we can see how God deals with sinners and their brokenness. "You anoint those who are dangerously wounded, you cleanse suppurating wounds." Here Hildegard is again engaged with her favorite topic, repentance. "You built another tower out of toll collectors and sinners, so that they would confess their sins and deeds before you. Therefore all creatures praise you . . . for you are the most precious ointment for broken limbs and festering wounds, which you transform into precious pearls."
Here the holiness of the Spirit of God is sung in the mystery of inexhaustible mercy. Truly, the "power of God will save you." The plan of salvation, however, is at the same time a plan of union: "You hope of the members for unity." For modern people, in contrast, a great deal has come apart. They themselves have been cut loose from the web of relationships and have succeeded in separating everything from all else. But God’s Spirit desires to gather and bind into unity. "You powerful way that traverses all things . . . you ordain and encompass all in one." The Holy Spirit is the guarantor of human dignity and the joy of life. The Spirit is the sound and the voice of our praise.
Perfection in Christ
All our prayers originate and have their goal in the dialogue of the Son of God with the Father. There, before all time, flows the uninterrupted conversation into which we are invited. Our impoverished and timid address to heaven is sustained by it, is surrounded by it, and flows into it. Thus it is right that this collection should close with the moving word of the Son to the Father that Hildegard placed at the conclusion and climax of her major work, "World and Humanity" and her little drama "Powers at Play." Imploringly the Son shows the Father his wounds, which remain open as long as any human being on earth still sins. Christ shows his stigmata not only as a sign of his incarnation but as the deepest expression of his solidarity with us sinners, and with the entire withering and fading creation.
"In the beginning all creation was greening . . . but then the power of life dried up. Remember, O Father! The hopes of the beginning should not have withered. . . . Father, look, I am your Son! . . . Behold the wounds . . . have mercy . . . ! Through the blood of my wounds bring them in penitence back to you."
The great themes of Hildegard’s visions are touched upon once more in this last prayer: the fall and restoration of creation, the healing of sinful human beings by the showing of their wounds and redemptive union with the wounds of the Lord. The prayer closes with the prophetic call to kneel in adoration before the creator and Father that he may reach out his hand to heal so that his beloved work may be perfected in human beings.
The readers of this book are invited to surrender with their whole hearts to these words of the prayers of Saint Hildegard. In them one of the greatest Christian women left us, almost 900 years ago, a moving testimony of living faith. This little book will have accomplished its purpose if even one text can open a conversation with God in the heart of the one who reads it and bring it about "God grant it!" that the reader may utter a single sigh.
Sister Caecilia Bonn, O.S.B.