Hildegard to the Abbot
The Letters
through your prayers I may merit salvation from the Lord, body and soul, when the course of my life has been completed. Amid all these pressures, one stands out above all the others, for which I beseech you to pray to the Lord. Through the present messenger, please send some token of salvation through which I may prosper and have a remembrance of you. My desire to visit with you will never leave me until—"if life accompany" [II Kings 4.16]—I have been able to do so.
Farewell.
176r Hildegard to the Abbot Before 1173 Hiidegard exhorts the abbot to persevere in his office.
Your mind is like the sphere of the fixed stars, which moves those stars here and there. But frequently a cloud is stirred up by a whirlwind and by the darkness of fire and water until the sun penetrates all things with its fiery sphere.
In your doubt, you are weary, and you are unwilling to labor because of the multifarious wars of mankind's morals. Now, if a young knight, who rejoices to be called a knight in his youthful strength, should say when his enemies attack him, "I cannot conquer my enemies," and throws down his arms, he would be derided and called a fool because his weapons did not flash honorably in battle.
Similarly, O master, you say that you are naked as a snake lying in its hole, because you do not strive to vanquish the storms assailing mankind with your armament This is not the way it will be. For in the first age the Lord established stewards and caretakers over all His possessions who were to render an account to Him [cf Matt 25.14ff; Luke 16. 1ff]. When a steward receives gifts, let him gather up his spears and arrows—spears to infuse the savage with Scriptures, arrows to infuse the impious, the crafty, and the furtive with the lessons from other writings. But if a great storm should arise with whirlwinds and black fire and water, with wrath and transgression or neglect of God's precepts, let him give way until the storm abates. Then let him offer medicine [cf. Ecclus 18.20] with the sun of Scriptures, as it is written, "I will have mercy and not sacrifice" [Matt 9.13; cf.
Hos 6.6].
Mercy demands prayer, which God loves. May the Holy Spirit make that prayer fiery between us, so that He may bring us into the heavenly Jerusalem
[cf. Heb 12.22]. Amen.