Vigils Reading

GOD WILL HELP YOU

From the Fourth Vision of St Hildegard of Bingen3

◊◊◊

Dearest children, open your eyes and ears… The choirs of angels sing,

“You are just, O Lord!”, because God’s justice has no flaw in it; for God delivered

Man not by power but by mercy, when He sent His Son into the world to redeem

him… But you, when you consider good and evil, are standing, as it were, where

two roads branch off. If you despise the darkness of evil and want to see Him

Whose creature you are, and Whom you acknowledged in holy baptism where

the old sin of Adam was nullified in you; and if you say, “ I want to fly from the

Devil and his works and follow the true God and His precepts”; then think how

you have been taught to turn away from evil and do good, and how the Heavenly

Father did not spare His Only-Begotten but sent Him for your deliverance; and

pray to God to help you. And He, hearing you, will say, “These eyes are pleasing

to me!” And if you then cast off weariness and run courageously in God’s

commands, He will always hear the cry of your prayers…

But if you have fallen into sin, quickly rise by confession and pure

penitence, before death lays claim to you. For your Father wants you to cry out,

weep and ask for help so as not to remain in the squalor of sin. For if you have

been wounded, you seek a physician lest you die. Does not God often send

people troubles, so that they will more intently invoke Him? But you, O human,

say “I cannot do good works!” I say you can. And you say “How?” And I say,

“By thought and action.” And you answer, “I lack decision.” And I answer,

“Learn to fight against yourself!” And you say, “I cannot fight against myself

unless God helps me.” Hear then how you can fight against yourself. When evil

rises up in you and you do not know how to get rid of it, then, touched by…grace,

which reaches you in the paths of your inner vision, at once cry out, pray,

confess and weep so that God will help you, and remove evil from you, and grant

you strength in good. For this good is yours by the knowledge that lets you

understand God by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit… So let the faithful person

recognize his pain and seek a physician before he falls dead.

3 Hildegard of Bingen. Scivias. Trans. Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop. New York: Paulist Press, 1990. 125-128.7