Thursday, September 17, 2009
Feast Day Of Hildegard Of Bingen
* There is the Music of Heaven in all things and we have forgotten how to hear it until we sing.
* Underneath all the texts, all the sacred psalms and canticles, these watery varieties of sounds and silences, terrifying, mysterious, whirling and sometimes gestating and gentle must somehow be felt in the pulse, ebb, and flow of the music that sings in me. My new song must float like a feather on the breath of God.
* When the words come, they are merely empty shells without the music. They live as they are sung, for the words are the body and the music the spirit.
Hildegard of Bingen
Readings:
Psalm 104:25-34
Sirach 43:1-2,6-7,9-12,27-28
Colossians 3:14-17
John 3:16-21
PRAYER
O God, by whose grace your servant Hildegard, kindled with the fire of your love, became a burning and shining light in your Church: Grant that we also may be aflame with the spirit of love and discipline, and walk before you as children of light; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
I love this story about Hildegard from James Kiefer's biography at the Lectionary:
In the last year of her life, she was briefly in trouble because she provided Christian burial for a young man who had been excommunicated. Her defense was that he had repented on his deathbed, and received the sacraments. Her convent was subjected to an interdict, but she protested eloquently, and the interdict was revoked.
Hildegard's quotes from About.com.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Blessings, Grandmere, she really showed her love of God in her beautiful music! I love the music that comes from this lady nun!
ReplyDeleteCiss, I love her music, too. It's pure. Of course, plainsong is pure.
ReplyDeleteOliver Sacks says that her visions may have resulted from migraines. I've experienced the visual effects of migraines a time or two, but they were quite mundane, with the appearance of venetian blinds. Oddly enough, they were associated with only mild headaches. I've never had a skull-buster migraine.
I have infrequent migraines too, but never with visions!
ReplyDeleteYa beat me to it.
ReplyDeleteDangers of working nights!
Thanks, Mimi. Hildegard's one of my favorites - she stood up to an unjust church that claimed to know better than a mere woman and won!
I'll also do my usual plug:
ReplyDeleteIf you haven't seen it, Patricia "Boo-kay Residence!" Routledge played a wonderful Hildegard of Bingen in an eponymous short film. I got it at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, but that was some time ago.
Mark, thanks for the info on the film. I'll look it up.
ReplyDelete