R166: Hildegard von Rupertsberg an Äbtissin H. von Kaufungen
A Call to Watchfulness
Hildegard urges the abbess to guard her soul and body from the devil's temptations before death, relying only on God's grace and good works.
Hildegard's reply. In the spirit I speak to you truthfully. Guard your soul, so it won't be defiled by wickedness. And gird your body with the justice of God. Do this before the day of your death, because afterward you won't be able to find any remedy! …except for whatever you've found through God's grace and the adornment of your works. Your enemy circles like a hawk! …tempting, looking for how it can wound your soul.
The Parable of the Trees
Hildegard recalls her parable of trees that wither in winter and flourish in summer, urging the abbess to let the Holy Spirit kindle spiritual fire within her.
Guard yourself from that one through zeal for good works and through abstinence from sins. Because your days don't have long stretches of time. So that the Holy Spirit may kindle its fire in you.1 So that you may remember these words. I speak this parable to you again. Trees dry up in winter. And in summer they flourish. And they produce their thick shoots.2
From Winter to Summer Greenness
Hildegard exhorts the abbess to flee the winter of sin and run into the green freshness of the Holy Spirit, bearing flowers and gathering sheaves, because God's grace does not flee from those who seek it.
With this in mind, keep your attention fixed for as long as you find yourself in the winter of transgression against the spiritual life. And run quickly — through a change of your ways — into the fresh greenness of the Holy Spirit, which is summer. And in this way, bring forth flowers. And gather your sheaves as quickly as you can. And yet, in the meantime, guard yourself against sin. Because I speak to you in truth. If you seek the grace of God, it will not flee from you.
Read the original Latin
Responsum hildegardis. In spiritu tibi ueraciter dico. Animam tuam custodi ne cum iniquitate coinquinetur. et corpus tuum cum iusticia dei circumcinge. et hoc ante diem mortis tuę facito quia postea nullum remedium inuenire poteris! nisi quantum per gratiam dei et ornamentum operum tuorum inueneris. Accipiter enim inimicus tuus circuit! temptans quomodo animam tuam uulnerare possit.
Ab illo te custodi per studium bonorum operum et per abstinentiam peccatorum. quia dies tui longa tempora non habent. unde spiritus sanctus in te ignem suum accendat. ut uerborum istorum recorderis. Iterum tibi hanc parabolam dico. Arbores in hieme arescunt. et in estate florent. et grossos suos producunt.
Hoc animo tuo intende quamdiu per preuaricationem spiritalis uitę in hieme sis. et per mutationem morum tuorum in uiriditatem spiritus sancti quę estas est festinanter curre. et hoc modo flores producito. et collige manipulos tuos quantocius possis. et tamen interim a peccatis te custodi. quia in ueritate tibi dico. si gratiam dei quesieris ipsa a te non fugit.
Notes
- 1 ↩unde may be resultative ('so that') or local ('from where'); the gloss marks the resultative or local sense as uncertain. The resultative reading fits the hortatory flow of the letter and is preferred here.
- 2 ↩grossos is identified as lexically uncertain in the gloss ('lexical identification uncertain'). It is rendered here as 'thick shoots' based on the likely sense of grossus in the context of tree growth.
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