Our baptistry, like most churches in the Catholic tradition, contains a variety of symbols.  Our baptismal font is a green glass bowl. Green (viriditas) is foundational to Hildegard’s theology. Next to the font is sacred oil which we make  ourselves each year through the process of collecting cottonwood buds in late winter and infusing them in high-quality olive oil to which we add balsam, frankincense, and myrrh. The Easter Candle sits above the font (it is pictured being blessed during the ritual of the blessing of the sacred fire each year on Holy Saturday). And, of course, the large wooden Cross is central.

Near the ambry (which is the shelf where the holy oil is stored), we have two icons of the myrrh-bearers. The icons depict the early Christian women who brought the sacred oils to Jesus to anoint him before and following his death. Also depicted on this wall are several images from St. Hildegard’s Book of Divine Works including the one described as the Living Font.

The first image depicts three female figures standing in the font of living water; Caritas (Divine Love); Humilitas (Humility, the queen of all the virtues in Hildegard’s visions); and Pax (Peace). Love and Humility are standing fully in the font and Peace is standing on the edge of the font representing the threshold between heaven and earth.  Above the female figures standing in the font is a “cloud of witnesses” representing the Communion of Saints (our ancestors in faith who have gone before us and continue to watch over and guide us).

In the Book of Divine Works, Hildegard described the three female figures in the font in the following way:

“And the first image spoke: ‘ I am Divine Love, the radiance of the living God. Wisdom has done her work with me, and Humility, who is rooted in the living fountain, is. my helper, and Peace accompanies her. And though that radiance that I am, the living light of the blessed angels blazes. For as a ray of light shines from its source, so this radiance enlightens the blessed angels; and it cannot but shine, as no light can exist without its flash. For I have composed humankind, who was rooted in me like a shadow, just as an object’s reflection is seen in water. So too I am the living fountain…” (386-388)

The city below the font is the City of God depicted in vision III.2 also hanging in our baptismal corner.