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Holy Fear and the Shadow of the Cross

Today, the Church takes us under the shadow of Calvary to behold our salvation and to approach this sacred place requires a reverence and awe that are not of this world. The Man of Sorrows gives Himself for our salvation, lays down His life that we might live. We come here today because of the burden of guilt that we have carried for far too long, the reality of death that we cannot avoid, and the desire to be understood and loved, to be connected to Someone who can relieve the sense of alienation that we suffer, to the only One who can fulfill at last the desires of our hearts. We dare to call out to Him “remember me” because of the heart-piercing gifts by which the Holy Spirit moves our hearts.

Saint Hildegard von Bingen describes this supernatural grace that she discovered when she entered into this shadow of God’s immensity. Fascinated and astounded, she has discovered awe in the presence of a reality greater and more real than is she. Tested, challenged, and tried, this gift from above makes her dare to approach nonetheless, and to stand humble, attentive, and ready to act. The tedium that can sometimes overcome a soul in prayer has no power over her now. Completely alert, this profound reverence prevents her from losing her focus, gives her the courage to stand firm, to behold, to listen, to adore. She personifies this astonishing super human gift, describing a mysterious figure covered with eyes, a creature who never loses sight of the immensity of Divine Justice, a being of merciful contemplation whom she identifies as “the Fear of the Lord.”

We, frail though we are, are all called to stand before the immensity of God’s justice and truth just like Saint Hildegard. The gift of fear of the Lord remains meaningless if we do not ponder the great mystery of human weakness and divine power, the abyss between actual human achievement and the demands of divine justice, and this for even the most pious and holy among us. What is this mountain, this immensity of Divine Justice, but the very mountain on which the Father glorified His Son, the mountain on which stands that Cross around which the whole world, each one’s life and all of history turns?

Up against the price that He paid for us and the greatness of the salvation He won for us, no one who is unwilling to bend the knee and bow the head should ever dare approach this King of Glory. Christ crucified knows our presumption and pride, our capacity for self-delusion, our hypocrisy, all the ways we overestimate ourselves, and even more, the ways we hate and torment ourselves.  These spiritual diseases are not acceptable to Him but for love of us, each one, He accepted their consequences unto death on the Cross. So He offered His last wordless cry, the prayer that still echoes between heaven and earth, a cry that death could not silence, that hell could not contain, this prayer from a heart that our cowardice and lust for power rent open.  This cry of love is the last word concerning all things human, the fullness of everything the Father has yearned for us to know, the voice that is heard the immensity of Divine glory. We dare not listen without the reverence this supreme act is owed.

If we are to stand before the mystery of the Suffering Servant who, raised on the Cross, revealed the unity of divine justice and mercy at the price of His own blood, then we need the Holy Spirit to protect us from our own cowardice and mediocrity. If we ask with humility, He gives us the same hope-filled fear that He breathed into the good thief and that He sent to stand with Saint Hildegard. If we will persevere in Calvary’s shadow, the Holy Spirit will move us with humble awe and wonder to renounce all the evil and mistaken judgements we have made about God, ourselves and neighbors.

When we tremble before the love, justice and mercy revealed on the Cross, holy fear makes us know that our Crucified God does not intend his admonishments to crush us but to prepare us, to make us humble and vulnerable enough to carry out His work in the world.  Holy fear will prevent us from losing heart. Today, Saint Hildegard’s vision of Divine Justice and Holy Fear gives us the courage to stand before the righteousness of God, to beg “remember me”, to confess his sovereignty, to bow our heads and to kiss his feet. 

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The Fire of St. Hildegard

The Abbess of Bingen describes “a blazing fire, incomprehensible, inextinguishable, wholly living and wholly Life, with a flame in it the color of the sky, which burned ardently with a gentle breath, and which was inseparably within the blazing fire.”

Although the vision itself was given to her in her forties, how she sees this vision is the fruit of a lifetime devoted to searching for God, quaerere Deum. She knows her glimpse into the Fire of Love is an undeserved gift. At the same time, she also knows she was able to receive because she had dedicated herself to studying our faith in the Lord with her whole mind, whole heart, whole soul and whole strength.

Anyone who commits themselves to search so great a mystery becomes acutely aware of being inadequate and unworthy. Such souls learn a humility that knows any wisdom they acquire will not be the result of their own resourcefulness. Instead, they live to behold the Living God with the eyes of faith knowing this vision as an inestimable gift which inspires heart-piercing gratitude and reverent movements of adoration. The teachings of St. Hildegard ring with this mystical wisdom.

We need her vision of God, her way of seeing the Mystery of our faith. Contemplating God as “Blazing Fire” corrects a certain static vision of God, one which sees Him as conveniently tamed and predictably dull. One of the gravest errors of our time is the intellectual and lived hubris that presumes to fit God into some system or agenda contrived by human cleverness. In St. Hildegard’s vision, all earthly powers of estimation and prediction are surmounted by the ardent burning in the heart of the Trinity.

She sees, she beholds, and she savors the radiant light and warming love of God. Because she is humble, He is able to constantly astonish her with new wonders and bath her in his dazzling splendor. Encountering One so totally other in holiness and truth, she is left stammering using a tapestry of rich images one following another in an effort to point to the One who has so captivates her thoughts and even more, has so captured her heart. In all of this, she is vulnerable to the hidden purpose He wants manifest.

When we seek the Lord with love driven faith, like St. Hildegard, we encounter a purposeful mystery who wants to disclose Himself, a hidden presence which no system can extinguish and no cleverness comprehend. Hidden and secret, the Life who reveals Himself in faith nonetheless enlightens and warms our whole existence in such manner that we must, like her, make Him known.

For her, at the center of this blazing vision of God is none other than the Eternal Word, the Word of Creation and Redemption, the divine utterance of the Father that resounds in the wonders He has made. Christ is the secret that opens access to the hidden depths of God. If we approach the Word of God in our living tradition ardently searching for God in word and sacrament, why should we not be able to share in her contemplation and find ourselves taken like her in silent adoration, our hearts full, bursting to cry out?

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St. Hildegard of Bingen’s Cry

“Arise therefore, and cry out”

September 17 is the feast of St. Hiildegard of Bingen. She lived from 1098-1179. A Benedictine Nun, at the age of 42, she was given visions and commanded rise up and cry out what she saw. She obeyed and produced a set of writings known today as Scivias.

Her first vision is of a hidden mountain, the mountain of God’s throne, an iron mountain of immutable justice hidden in divine glory. A purifying Fear of the Lord contemplates this splendor. Not the kind of fear that pulls away to protect itself. Rather the kind of fear that is vigilant and sees the truth. Eyes which gaze with this holy fear can never be satisfied with the merely mediocre. They guard against every form of compromise. The glory they behold demands absolute allegiance, complete surrender, and total humility.

In this description, is St. Hildegard suggesting a way by which we might enjoy the same vision she has shared in? This is no exercise in esoteric navel gazing. Her vision demands a journey beyond our own self-pre-occupation and into real friendship with God, a friendship protected by the strength of divine justice. She sees the truth in a way that demands an ongoing conversion of life.

She is well-formed in St. Benedict’s conversatio morum. The mountain she sees is not a truth we scrutinize so much as the truth that scrutinizes us: a scrutinizing of all our thoughts and actions in light of the Gospel. The truth she beholds demands repentance from the lack of justice we allow ourselves to slip into. The iron mountain she contemplates renders futile every effort to conform the Gospel to our own ways and invites us to be transformed by its just demands.

Today, where all kinds of cruelty are so easily excused and any form of self-indulgence so readily lifted up to the level of a fundamental human right, we need to rediscover the shadow of the iron mountain from which St. Hildegard cries out to us. Only under the glory of this mountain can we find the peace that the Lord has come to give. Only in the blinding light into which Holy Fear gazes can we find the humility to love one another the way Christ has loved us.

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Two New Doctors of the Church to be celebrated October 7

St. John of Avila and St. Hildegard of Bingen will be formally declared Doctors of the Church on October 7 of this year.   Even though they were separated culturally and historically, both of these great saints were part of efforts to renew the practice of mental prayer and the reform of the life of the Church.  St. Hildegard from the Benedictine tradition founded monasteries in Germany while St. John worked with the early Jesuits to reform the priesthood in Spain.

Mental prayer or contemplative prayer is a deep engagement of the heart and mind with the mystery of Christ.   This devotion to Christ is always fruitful in wonderful and mysterious ways.   Those who spend themselves in silence pondering the Word of God through passages of the Bible and before the Blessed Sacrament open themselves to a general loving knowledge about God and the things of God.   This mystical wisdom not only changes their lives and motivates them to do something beautiful for God, but it also infuses the whole Church with new life.

St. Hildegard and St. John discovered this in their own day when the Church most needed it and today we are still blessed.   Hopefully, their teachings and examples will inspire many more to a deeper devotion to Christ, a time when the Church needs the wisdom of God more than ever.

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