R208: Hildegard von Rupertsberg an Balduin von Utrecht
God's Five Works in Humanity
Hildegard announces her visionary reply and enumerates God's five operations in human beings: formation, the breath of life, understanding, good work, and the knowledge of evil.
Hildegard's reply. I heard this in a true vision. God's work had five operations in human beings. The first is that the human being was formed. The second, that they received the breath of life. The third, that they understood, because they were able to work. The fourth, that they undertook good work! The fifth, that they knew evil.
The Five Steps of True Penance
Hildegard offers a similitude of five progressive stages of penance: remembering sins with sorrow, turning from them, confessing them, doing penance, and becoming alien to evil.
This is a comparison: it can look toward anyone at all in this way. The first instance is understood when a person remembers their sins with sighs, because they are useless. The second, that a person turns away from sins a little. The third, that by confessing them a person lays them open. The fourth, that a person does penance. The fifth, that a person makes themselves alien to evil.
A Call to Penance in Fear and Trembling
Hildegard exhorts the recipient to perform penance in fear and trembling because he has harmed God's work, offering praise to God through groaning and sighing before a priest.
So then, O man, do penance in fear and trembling at these works that God has worked in man!✦ because in some part you have crushed his work. For in the hearing of the priest, as long as you shall have lived and shall have had the ability. you will offer something of praise to God in groaning and sighing.
Read the original Latin
Responsum hildegardis. Hęc in uera uisione audiui. Quinque operationes opus dei in homine habuit. Prima est quod homo formatus est. secunda quod spiraculum uitę accepit. tercia quod intellexit quia operari potuit. quarta quod bonum opus suscepit! quinta quod malum cognouit.
Hęc similitudo! ad quemlibet hominem sic respicere potest. Prima uice intelligitur. quod homo criminum suorum cum suspirijs meminit quia inutilia sunt. secunda quod a criminibus aliquantulum declinat. tercia quod ea confitendo aperit. quarta quod penitentiam agit! quinta quod se malo alienum facit.
Ideo tu o homo in his operibus quę deus in homine operatus est timendo et tremendo penitentiam fac! quoniam in aliqua parte opus ipsius contriuisti. In audientia enim sacerdotis quamdiu uixeris et possibilitatem habueris. aliquid laudis in gemitu et suspirio deo exhibebis.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Phil.2.12 — Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
Epistolae: Letters to Frederick Barbarossa and Henry II of England companion
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