Church doors are highly symbolic and are often blessed when a church building is dedicated, rededicated, or when it reaches a significant milestone (for example, an anniversary). The doors represent the threshold (a liminal space) between the material world and the spirit world. The doors are invitation to leave the worries of the world behind while taking time to sit in an awareness that we are in the presence of God.

We blessed the doors of our church building on September 15, 2019 when we opened them for the first time as the Community of St. Hildegard.  The doors were blessed with sacred oil made from beeswax from the hive on our property.

On our doors are two bronze plates depicting St. Hildegard of Bingen. In the long document submitted to Rome in 2012 on behalf of the canonization of Hildegard, there is a photo of these bronze plaques in section XI Iconografia. The description of the plaques state that they were created on the occasion of the 800 year anniversary of Hildegard’s death (1979). The artist’s name is not listed, and it is not clear how many replications of the plaque were produced, but they are included in the document as an example of how her memorial was commemorated in that year.

These two plaques were gifted to our founding pastor, Rev. Dr. Shanon Sterringer, in 2016 by the parish catechists at St. Anthony of Padua Church in Fairport Harbor (where she had served as a Director of Religious Education for many years before following her call to ordained ministry). The bronze plaques hung outside on each of the buildings (church and rectory) from 2016 to 2018. Early in 2019, they were removed from the outside of the buildings to be added to the inside church doors for the rededication.

In Hildegard’s first major theological work, Scivias (Book Three, Vision Nine), she recorded a vision of the many different kinds of people who enter and exit the church doors.

“Many of these people are going to the building, between the tower of the anticipation of God’s will and the pillar of the divinity of God’s Word, entering and leaving through the wall of reflective knowledge like clouds, which are diffused here and there. And each one who entered the building was clothed in a white garment. Some of them rejoiced with great joy in the smoothness and softness of the garment, and kept it on; but others seemed bothered by its weight and confining nature, and tried to take it off. And the virtue whom I had previously heard called the Knowledge of God often graciously stopped them, and said to each one, ‘Consider, and keep the garment with which you are clothed'” (451).

Here at the Community of St. Hildegard, we celebrate an open-table which means we believe all are truly welcome. It is our belief that everyone who walks through this church door (whether physically or virtually) has been clothed in the white garment of divine dignity. Whether or not one chooses to embrace this garment is personal (free-will), nonetheless, the gift of the garment remains.

These beautiful bronze plaques include not only an image of St. Hildegard and the symbols significant to her (staff and feather), but she is surrounded by vines and grapes – an image of viriditas (the eternal greening power of God). We have carried this image into our sanctuary as the theme of our handmade tabernacle.

The Hildegard Haus is a liminal space. This is true not only of the threshold, which is blessed in a traditional German format each year on the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6), but the entire space is sacred, a thin space, where the material and spiritual worlds are noticeably intermingled. The name Hildegard means “fierce” or to “battle” and so it is most appropriate that her image, set in bronze, is guarding or protecting our doors.