The Cosmic Christ and Hildegard

The word of God is everywhere and in everything, for “without the Word of God no creature has being. God’s Word is in all creation, visible and invisible.”  

Hildegard is teaching about the Cosmic Christ, for the Cosmic Christ–or cosmic wisdom–is the image of God in all things.  It’s the light in everything, as science today assures us that there are light waves or photons in every atom in the universe.  Hildegard often saw the light in all things.  She painted it and set it to music, which is why she speaks of her paintings, visions, and mandalas as “illuminations.”  Light beings bear light and reveal by way of light.  

Notice that for Hildegard the “Word of God is in all beings whether visible or invisible.”  So even the darkness contains the light, the Word of God, the Cosmic Christ, which is cosmic wisdom.  It’s everywhere, and it renders all beings holy, all beings luminous and numinous, full of creativity and generativity.  To have being is to be a temple for the Word of God.  

What’s the nature of this Word?  “The Word is living, being, spirit, all verdant greening, all creativity.”  At the heart of the Word, at the heart of all beings, is creativity and “all verdant greening.”  All things are fertile, all things busy birthing and creating.  How contemporary is Hildegard’s view of the world!  We can’t escape the ever evolving, ever creating, and ever passing nature of created things. 

This is postmodern science, since creativity is one of the patterns inherent in evolution.  It’s also Hildegard’s awareness in the 12th century!  We are all verdant, all green, all busy creating.  “All creation is awakened, called, by the resounding melody, of God’s invocation of the Word….  “

For Hildegard, it’s God or Spirit who does the awakening and the calling, for God is invoking the “Word” that “manifests in every creature.”  Yet true to Cosmic Christ consciousness, “the Word is indivisible from God.”  In other words, everything we have said about creatures–everything we observe about sun and moon, galaxies and stars, whales and cats, rosebushes and redwood trees, mountains and rivers, you and me–all this is a manifestation of the divine Word, the divine Logos, the divine wisdom that’s alive in everything.    

From Matthew Fox, Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint For Our Times – Unleashing Her Power in the 21st Century, pp. 11-13 Matthew Fox, Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen, pp. 54-55 and 66-67.  
Banner Image: “Waterfall, Costa Rica” Photo by Kerstin Wießer-Buchholz from Pixabay

Queries for Contemplation

Take a phrase or word from this meditation and be still with it, letting it wash over you and through and through you.  Repeat it as a mantra.  Be with the silence that follows.  Be with, be with…. 

Meditate on the words: “All things are busy birthing and creating…”. What does this say to you?

Do you experience this omnipresent green and creative “word” in all things? Under what circumstances do you most feel that?

Recommended Reading

Hildegard of Bingen, A Saint for Our Times: Unleashing Her Power in the 21st Century

Author Matthew Fox writes in Hildegard of Bingen about this amazing woman and what we can learn from her.
In an era when women were marginalized, Hildegard was an outspoken, controversial figure. Yet so visionary was her insight that she was sought out by kings, popes, abbots, and bishops for advice.

Learn More

Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen

An introduction to the life and work of Hildegard of Bingen, Illuminations reveals the life and teachings of one of the greatest female artists and intellectuals of the Western Mystical Tradition.  At the age of 42, she began to have visions; these were captured as 36 illuminations–24 of which are recorded in this book along with her commentaries on them. “If one person deserves credit for the great Hildegard renaissance in our time, it is Matthew Fox.”  – Dr Mary Ford-Grabowsky, author of Sacred Voices.

Learn More