Virtues and Salvation
Gospel reflection for Mar 5, 2024: Mt. 18:21-35
Today’s readings can be found on the USCCB website.
Hildegard of Bingen is a doctor of the Church and was a polymath of her time, though I daresay that out of the four women doctors, she is the least read. She is well known for her musical compositions and at least superficially known for her visions, though both are profound theological contributions to our Christian heritage. The joy of sitting with the saints and asking them to help enlighten our journeys into their life and works is that we can discover gems below the surface. Hildegard offers us some great help on how we can understand this Gospel.
Jesus’ parable today centres on forgiveness. Were I to summarise chapter eighteen of Matthew’s Gospel into one virtue, I would say it is humility. We are called to humility to a greater extent than we desire. Called to be humble until it hurts. Truly, this is what Jesus’ life broke open for us - humility is what cracks open our hard shells to allow the balm of salvation to re-create us. The balm of salvation is borne to us through the Son of God humbling himself into the form of a slave and then to death - even death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-11). This humility has at its source divine love (or charity).
Hildegard’s writings give honour and prominence to these two virtues: humility and charity. In his incarnation, Christ adorned himself with these to reveal himself in humanity:
“Humility is like the soul,” she says, “and charity like the body, and they cannot be separated from each other but work together, just as soul and body cannot be disjoined but work together as long as a person lives in the body.” The power in humility is that through the process of humbling oneself, we embody the virtue which “groans, weeps and destroys all offenses” against God.1 She shares that as Christ clothed himself in humility, when we put on humility we encounter God’s grace and are transformed with and into God’s glory.
God freely bestows the gift of his mercy and forgiveness to those who approach him. When one approaches clothed not in humility but in pride, the result is illustrated in today’s Gospel - we cannot truly benefit from the gift and we make the gift ugly, tarnishing ourselves and obscuring God’s work in us. When humility (and charity) are worn as we approach and ask for mercy from our King, we are touched with his transforming grace and these virtues scrub the vessel of our souls so that we can clearly shine and allow the fire of the Holy Spirit to shine within us.
God’s justice is his mercy to those who can bear it and Jesus tells us we cannot bear his justice without humility.
Hildegard. Scivias. Translated by Columba Hart and Jane Bishop. Classics of Western Spirituality. New York: Paulist Press, 1990, 89-90 (Book 1, vision 2).
I dedicated all of my work to the patronage of Saint Hildegard before I wrote my first book - I am still praying to understand her system of herbal medicine. It is always both spiritual and physical - not "take 2 aspirin" but she believed that God gave plants virtues to help heal our souls or protect us from evil as well!
Loved this… I did have to look up that word, polymath. I have both been inspired and educated. :)