R152: Hildegard von Rupertsberg an Adelheid von Gandersheim
An Anxious Soul Comforted
Hildegard consoles a troubled soul, urging pure faith and good works instead of anxious doubt.
Hildegard's reply. O daughter of God, your mind is caught in great anxiety, pulled in two directions. For through a certain worry you are wasting away, as if you might despair of your life. And so when at times you climb to God upon the mountain of confident faith— you question him as though you didn't know what to do in this doubt. But walk with pure faith, doing good works in the day of your prosperity! And give to God what is his. For you see the sun—that is, the honor which God will not yet take from you.
Walking as the Moon Before God
Hildegard calls her reader to serve God in every part of life, under the image of the moon shining in night, and to seek God's mercy and the freshness of the Holy Spirit.
You hold the world in sighing and in the fear of God's law. Like the moon in the night. In each part, therefore, be in service to God, because He demands your sacrifice. And He demands good works from you in your life before you die. May the light of God's grace cover you. And may He anoint you with the oil of His mercy. With which David was anointed when, confessing his sins, he saw God.1 May He Himself also anoint you with the freshness of the Holy Spirit, and may He bring about good and holy works in you through that devotion with which true worshippers worship God.2
Keep His Commandments and Live
Hildegard closes with a brief, urgent command to keep God's commandments in order to live forever.
Keep God's commandments! and you will live forever.
Read the original Latin
Responsum hildegardis. O filia dei in magna sollicitudine per duas uias mens tua occupata est. Nam per quandam sollicitudinem tabescis quasi de uita tua desperes. unde cum interdum super montem confidentis fidei ad deum ascendis. eum interrogas quasi nescias quid in ista dubietate facias. Sed tu cum pura fide bona opera operando in die prosperitatis tuę ambula! et deo quod suum est da. Nam solem uides scilicet honorem illum quem deus nondum abstrahet a te.
et seculum in suspirio et in timore legis dei habes. sicut lunam in nocte. In utraque ergo parte seruiens esto deo quia sacrificium tuum uult. et bona opera a te in uita tua postulat antequam moriaris. Lux gratię dei operiat te. et unctione misericordię suę te unguat. qua dauid unguebat cum peccata sua confitendo deum uidit. Ipse etiam unctione uiriditatis spiritus sancti te unguat et bona ac sancta opera in te faciat per deuotionem illam qua ueri adoratores deum adorant.
Tu precepta dei obserua! et in eternum uiues.
Notes
- 1 ↩The Latin is compressed: 'qua' refers back to the anointing of mercy/grace, and the temporal clause 'cum peccata sua confitendo' describes David's penitential posture when he received the anointing and 'saw God.' The syntax is elliptical but the sense is that David's confession opened him to divine encounter.
- 2 ↩Viriditas (freshness/greenness) is a characteristically Hildegardian term for the life-giving vitality of the Holy Spirit. Rendered here as 'freshness' to preserve the organic, living quality of the Latin.
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