Vigils Reading

WHEN A PERSON’S MIND IS TOUCHED BY GOD

From the mystical discourse between God and St Hildegard of Bingen6 ◊◊◊

…I admonish and exhort humanity, and grant it pearls of goodness; when a person’s mind is touched by me, I am his beginning. That is to say, when a person understands my admonition with his sense of hearing, and his senses consent to my touching his mind, I initiate good in him. And it is needful that he begin thus, with me helping him. Then a struggle follows: Will my gift attain its end or not? How? Understand thus. When I admonish a person, so that he begins to lament and weep for his sins, then if his will consents to my admonition – for he will feel the change in his mind, and according to his mind’s desire he will raise his eyes to see and his ears to hear and his mouth to speak and his hands to touch and his feet to walk – his mind will raise itself to conquer his senses, so that they will learn things their habits could not teach them…

There are many people who, feeling my presence and understanding that my admonition has touched their minds, fly from me by the evil ways of the sins they conceive, which they have swallowed by their choice, consent and deeds. And therefore they are to God as nothing, with no being at all, since they choose not to know what they can do when I touch them… They flee from the Grace of God; for they do not want to see or hear or think of what they should do when goodness admonishes them. They flee the good admonition like a worm burrowing into the earth. The worm hides itself from all the beauty of the world; and so do the wicked, flying from the commands of God and wrapping themselves in ordure, pollution and death, and hiding in it, afraid to come out of the stench of evil into the light. Such as these do not belong to me, for I do not choose to be apportioned here and there amid the mire. How? I choose to be with those who understand me and repent in purity; and then I join myself to human corruption in order to purge it…

I will polish and refine them without ceasing, that they may rightly and fitly be placed in the heavenly Jerusalem… I often withdraw from them, so that it seems to them that they are without help; this I do that their outer person may not be puffed up with pride. Then they weep aloud and lament, thinking I am offended with them; but it is thus I scrutinize their faith.

And I still hold them with a strong hand, taking away their pride and forcing them to be ignorant of what they are in their secret good deeds; for thus I will to produce in them the fruits of grief and sorrow. And sometimes I let the Devil try to seduce them with the fiery arrows of impurity and burning fornication, which wound their frail bodies; this I permit that they may be imbued with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and so become great messengers, glorious in virtue. They are tested like gold in the furnace, tried by mockery and provocation and set at naught… But as sheep scattered by the wolf do not die, so these people do not perish in soul but live more fully, purified by their troubles…

So now, my dearest children, sweeter in fragrance to me than spices, hear me admonishing you. While you have time to do good and evil, worship your God with true devotion. Again, O my dearest children, who are rising like the dawn, and who must burn in charity like the sun; run and make haste, dearest ones, in the way of truth, which is the light of the world, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Who redeemed you in the last days by His blood so that when you die you may joyfully attain to Him