St. Hildegard of Bingen gives credit to the Living Light for not only her theological visions, but for almost every decision she made as a magistra of her community. She also used the Living Light as her advocate to plead her case (more than once) with the powers that be. The following excerpt is from the Declaration at the beginning of her first theological work Scivias where she describes how she experienced the presence of Living Light:

“And behold! In the forty-third year of my earthly course, as I was gazing with great fear and trembling attention at a heavenly vision, I saw a great spendor in which resounded a voice from Heaven saying to me… ‘Say and write what you see and hear…’ Heaven was opened and a fiery light of exceeding brilliance came and permeated my whole brain, and inflamed my whole heart and my whole breast, not like a burning but like a warming flame, as the sun warms anything its rays touch…” (59)

These two pieces pictured are next to the side church door. The framed print on the right is Hildegard’s “self-portrait” from the Declaration in Scivias. It was purchased at St. Hildegard’s Abbey in Eibingen, Germany. The framed painting on the left was painted for us by Rev. Peter Mihalic. It is appropriately named Lux Vivens – Living Light!

In addition to mentioning the Living Light as the source of revelation throughout her writings, Hildegard also composed an antiphon to the angels entitled, O gloriosissimi lux vivens angeli (the following translation is from Dr. Barbara Newman).

O most glorious angels, living light: beneath the Divinity you gaze on the eyes of God within the mystical darkness of all creation in ardent desires, so you can never be satiated. 

O how glorious are those joys that belong to your form, which in you is untouched by all the wicked work that first arose in your companion, the lost angel, who wished to fly above the pinnacle hidden in the depths of God.

So he crookedly plunged into ruin – but by his counsel, he supplied the means of his fall to the handiwork of God.