Hildegard’s Green Grace

If Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) were cut, she might just bleed green, so deep was her love for the color and all it symbolized.

As a Benedictine abbess known for her wide-ranging interests, Hildegard is original in countless ways. Perhaps nothing illustrates her inventiveness more than her use of the color green as a broad theological motif. Although Hildegard seldom employs established theological terminology, her systematic teaching about viriditas, or “greening,” represents her doctrine of divine grace. Hildegard’s viriditas is God’s energetic life-force, a figurative “green sap”¹ bestowing fertile blessing in nature, divine life through Christ, and spiritual vitality in the believer. Viriditas pulses strongly through Hildegard’s theology; it is the green lifeblood of her theological universe.

Since Hildegard’s novel use of viriditas springs from her life experiences, this article will provide a short biography of these experiences. Then, after defining the term viriditas, we will look at Hildegard’s specific teachings about viriditas to get the full scope of her theological thought. Finally, the purpose of this study is to inspire today’s church to view creation and humanity through Hildegard’s green lens.

Hildegard of Bingen

It was a three-year-old Hildegard who received her first vision from God.² From then on, she was constantly aware of a fiery light that remained in her consciousness.³ Facing ridicule as a child for sharing her vision, she fell silent about it at the age of fifteen, confiding only in her mentor, the abbess Jutta (1091–1136).⁴ In 1141, at the age of forty-three, Hildegard received a divine command. She heard a voice declare: “Write down what I tell you!” Initially, she resisted, but her refusal resulted in a long illness which only relented as she took up her pen. Describing herself as “a fragile and wretched creature,” Hildegard obeyed, writing what she saw and heard with a “trembling hand.”⁵

Hildegard’s visions are explained in her three theological works: Scivias (Know the Ways), Liber vitae meritorium (Book of Life’s Merits), and Liber divinorum operum (Book of Divine Works). The medieval scholar Peter Dronke (1934–2020) emphasizes that Hildegard herself attributes her theology to her visions, yet Dronke recognizes her mastery of Scripture and extensive reading as the foundation of her thought. Hildegard weaves truth with her evocative insight to develop a unique theological style. Dronke also observes that, even though she had been informed by early Christian and medieval writings, “She took nothing ready-made.”⁶ Her three theological treatises reflect both original insight and careful scholarship centering on creation spirituality—a materialistic cosmology revealing how the triune God redeems his creation.

Hildegard wrote and taught most often in the context of her Benedictine community of nuns. At the age of eight she was dedicated by her devout family as a postulant to the monastery in Disibodenburg, Germany. When she was thirty-eight, the nuns elected her as their magistra, which is similar to a Mother Superior.⁷ It was in this setting that Hildegard helped form the spiritual lives of these women. The monastery was surrounded by the lush, productive countryside of the Rhine Valley. Priest and theologian Matthew Fox describes this region’s rich soil, winding rivers, and fertile fruit orchards and vineyards, crediting them as a source for Hildegard’s vivid metaphor of viriditas.⁸

Later, while building her own monastic foundation at Rupertsberg near Bingen, Hildegard won the approval of mystic, abbot, and reformer Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), and through Bernard’s influence, Pope Eugenius III (1088–1153) recognized the authenticity of her divine gifts. In 1147, the pope instructed her to record whatever she received from the Holy Spirit. With this sanction, she became an influential counselor, receiving requests for guidance from royalty, clergy, and politicians on matters ranging from theology to marriage.⁹

A true renaissance woman before her time, Hildegard’s gifts extended beyond theology. She was a music composer and a playwright. In 1158, she conducted four preaching tours sanctioned by the pope. She authored two encyclopedias on pharmacology. Her personal correspondence is a chronicle of the who’s who of the twelfth century. She died in 1179. In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI posthumously named her a Doctor of the Church.

Defining Viriditas

Hildegard uses her concept of viriditas extensively, although she never clearly defines it.¹⁰ Instead, she expounds on its location, characteristics, usefulness, source, abilities, and its scarcity. Hildegard transforms viriditas into a complex and flexible theological motif of God’s grace, applying it in multiple contexts and imbuing it with profound depth across the spectrum of nature, medicine, doctrine, and spiritual practices.

Viriditas is translated from Latin into English as “greenness” or “viridity.” It is not a coincidence to Hildegard that the first color mentioned in Scripture is green (Gen 1:30), because this color reflects the character and creative energy of God. As Hosea 14:8 suggests, God is like a fir tree that is always green. Hence, the plain sense of viriditas encompasses both the literal color and the figurative idea of fertility.

Hildegard adds an essential element to viriditas of not only greenness and growth, but moisture. That which lacks viriditas is dry (ariditas), whereas that which possesses viriditas is alive and fresh. Translators of her works, struggling to capture the meaning viriditas in one English word, render it variously as “freshness, vitality, fertility, fecundity, fruitfulness, verdure, [and] growth.”¹¹

Interpreting Viriditas

It is hard to pin down a one-word definition of viriditas because Hildegard does not build her system of thought with coherent, ordered structure and precise definitions. Instead, she gathers her diverse insights into a looser, more associative whole. Hildegard’s theology of viriditas is a living patchwork of insight into how God’s grace flows and enlivens his beloved creation. Millard Erickson, an evangelical systematic theologian, writes that grace “means that God supplies us with undeserved favors.”¹² In Hildegard’s cosmology, this favor is green, wet, and alive.

Viriditas in Creation

Hildegard saw God’s grace at work literally in the material world, describing this viriditas as “the exquisite greening of trees and grasses” and the “earth’s lush greening.”¹³ Unlike the Reformers centuries later, she does not delineate the differences between kinds of viriditas in terms of common grace and salvific grace. Rather, she presents God’s undeserved favor on humanity as flowing from the same source. Theologian Robert Shore-Goss describes her vision of viriditas as an “uninterrupted flow of God’s communicative love.”¹⁴ God’s verdant grace is of one kind, offered universally through creation, incarnate in Christ, and imparted by the Spirit. It transforms all who receive it from dead dryness to lush, vibrant, divine life.

Hence, the essential element in the development of Hildegard’s theology of viriditas is its source. God shares his divine energy as viriditas. In her Book of Divine Works, she describes God as “the fiery life of divine essence” actively present in all creation—the sea, sun, moon, stars, wind, and flowers.¹⁵ This living energy is not only a fiery power, it is greening¹⁶—a life force from the triune God who is “always in motion and constantly in action.”¹⁷ Her concept of viriditas has been described as “God’s generative power that permeates and upholds the creation,”¹⁸ echoing Acts 17:25–28: God “himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.  . . . ‘For in him we live and move and have our being’” (NIV). Viriditas portrays God as living action that fills creation with constant greening power.¹⁹

It is only through God’s sharing of his own viriditas that the earth was formed and flourishes.²⁰ Author Allison Elledge notes that Hildegard views viriditas as analogous to the soul in plants and animals. God’s essence enters the natural world and is shared with all creatures.²¹ In her work, Physica, Hildegard writes that “the herbs vigorously imbibe [viriditas], as a lamb sucking milk.”²² Viriditas in natural substances varies by degree in species, climates, and functional application. Even stones and gemstones, especially emeralds, receive green growth from God. Viriditas in plants can be transmitted to humans or animals through consumption. Viriditas can also be transmitted through the Eucharist, which for Hildegard, imparts divine grace. Those who partake the bread and wine “become green and fruitful from him so that they too bring forth the fruits of virtues.”²³

Hildegard expounds on God’s green grace as an energetic force bestowing fertile blessing and divine favor across creation in poetic language similar to Psalm 104.²⁴ She speaks of the Holy Spirit bringing the waters that are the “source of the earth’s lush greening.”²⁵ In a song to St. Disibode (619-700), she exclaims, “O life giving greenness of God!”²⁶ When she describes God’s greenness falling on “the evil and the good,” “the righteous and the unrighteous,” she is quoting Jesus in Matthew 5:45, affirming that God rains his favor upon all. This rain is green and alive in Hildegard’s imaginative mind.

Like Jesus who drew teaching inspiration from the landscapes around him, Hildegard employs the organic imagery of viriditas to express theological insight. Jesus used sparrows, lilies, seeds, fig trees, vines, branches, and sheep to illustrate how God’s favor on humanity is evident all around us, a sign that God is here in our midst (Luke 17:21). Hildegard also desires to portray God as immanently involved in both the physical and spiritual realms. Acts 17:27 affirms that, through creation, God is not remote, but nearby. This immanence is at the heart of Hildegardian theology. She rarely frames the spiritual and physical as opposites. Instead, God’s viriditas represents the continual outpouring of God’s vigor for both physical and spiritual health, emphasizing the unity of creation with humans and the physical body with the soul. Author Carmen Butcher observes that Hildegard’s strength lies in her refusal to accept neat dichotomies like earth versus spirit, body versus soul, and nature versus humanity. Instead, Hildegard presents a unified vision, a “whole,” as Butcher puts it, rich in metaphor and bright with imagery, interwoven and alive.²⁷ In doing so, viriditas offers a vivid, organic lens through which we deepen our understanding of God’s favor not exclusively towards humanity, but towards all creation.

Viriditas in Salvation

Hildegard’s vision of God as the source of viriditas extends beyond the material to the spiritual realm. Viriditas is the life-giving breath of God that gave humankind a soul in Genesis 2:7. Commenting on John 1:1, Hildegard writes that viriditas was the work of the Word from the beginning.²⁸ She writes: “The Word is . . . all verdant greening.”²⁹ The Holy Spirit, whom Hildegard describes as a “sweet greening power, sent the Word into the womb of the virgin.”³⁰ Referencing Genesis 3:15 where the woman’s seed is foretold as defeating the serpent, she describes Mary as producing the Spirit’s “glowing, most green, verdant sprout.”³¹ Jesus is viriditas incarnate, preexistent, and proceeding from the Father’s “burning viridity.”³² It is the incarnation that redeems us and the death of Jesus that awakens us. Hildegard writes, “Just as a mother gives milk to her children,” the Word pours his viriditas into humanity, bringing us new life.³³ She imagines Christ shaking out his green mantle saturated from the bubbling fountain of God’s viriditas so that we might be “drenched, watered, with thousands of drops of precious dew.”³⁴

Hildegard’s theology diverges from that of her contemporaries in that she does not center her thought on Augustine’s framework of fall and redemption.³⁵ While themes of sin and salvation appear in her work, they exist in the broader context of God’s activity throughout creation. Her cosmic Christ, though a redeemer in every sense, is primarily God’s self-sharing with all of creation, not only with humanity. In Jesus, God interacts perfectly with his creatures by becoming human. In her words, God says: “The human is the very garment with which my Son robed himself in royal splendor.”³⁶ As the Franciscan priest Richard Rohr observes, the cosmic Christ Jesus is “God materialized.”³⁷

This materialization of God in Jesus expands Hildegard’s use of viriditas. Hildegard ties the teaching in Romans 1:20—that God’s invisible qualities (viriditas) are revealed in the created world—with Hebrews 1:3—that the radiance of God’s glory (viriditas) is found in the Son. Viriditas in both creation and in Christ represents the part of God accessible to human experience and understanding. She writes, “There is no creation that does not have a radiance. Be it greenness or seed, blossom or beauty, it could not be creation without it.”³⁸ Witnessing that radiance in creation and in the Son allows a glimpse of God.

Hildegard’s theology is rooted not only in the natural world, but also in her existential visions. It is these real encounters with God, rather than abstract academic reasoning, that gives her teaching such passion. She experiences faith not as a set of propositions but as a dynamic interaction with Christ.³⁹ Jesus, in her view, is “familiar and approachable,”⁴⁰ not a creed to rationalize. Hildegard’s poetic use of viriditas in her theological works and in her music conveys emotion as well as intellect, celebrating the emotions of both God and humanity.

The emphasis on passion contrasts with earlier Christian approaches, which often distrusted emotion. Thinkers like Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 335–ca. 394), influenced by a privileging of reason over passion, argued that corporeal affection must be suppressed to savor spiritual passion.⁴¹ Bernard of Clairvaux extended this, suggesting that spiritual love replaces carnal desire.⁴² Origen (ca. 185–ca. 254) emphasized the spiritual senses as superior to the five physical senses as ways to experience God. Hildegard departs from their lead by affirming that “God is delighted with humankind” and that he “allows himself to be disturbed by it.”⁴³ God is impressed by human form, even kisses it.⁴⁴ Unlike Origen, she teaches that it is the five senses that facilitate knowing God. “In seeing—we recognize all the world. In hearing—to understand. In smelling—to discern. In tasting—to nurture. In touching—to govern. In this way humankind comes to know God.”⁴⁵ She urges celebration and service: “Be ablaze with enthusiasm!”⁴⁶

Though her imagery can be elaborate, even fantastic, her allegory of viriditas serves a precise purpose. Because she grounded her teaching in “self-evident truths rather than textual authority,”⁴⁷ she opens alternative pathways for theological reflection and expression. Her development of the concept of viriditas exemplifies this approach, presenting the doctrinal truth of Christ’s redemption through organic imagery and poetry, inviting deep contemplation on divine favor in order to draw us nearer to him.

Viriditas in Spiritual Growth

For believers, viriditas produces virtue and spiritual fruit. A new Christian is like an unplowed field who receives the Word of God. God’s love is poured on them like rain, and the Spirit brings fruitfulness to the soil. However, a Christian can also cultivate growth by the “greening of the soul” in which “the soul honors God by the doing of just deeds.”⁴⁸ This greening of the soul is more than doing good works. Hildegard affirms that “a person cannot be fruitful without the greening power of faith and an understanding of Scripture.”⁴⁹

Hildegard’s fresh vision of God’s empowering grace in viriditas aligns with Ephesians 2:5–10. God made us alive in Christ, offering grace through faith that enables us to do the good works God created us to do. Hildegard writes that God says, “I am the life and verdancy of good works.”⁵⁰ This verdancy, she teaches, enlivens believers with the Holy Spirit’s “green freshness of life,” enabling them to flourish and bear fruit.⁵¹ In her Book of Divine Works, Hildegard explains that a good life begins with the awe of God, alongside a disciplined mind that gives constant attention to the divine (Vision Two: 18). This is her description of faith. This faith “submerges” the believer in confidence, dispelling confusion, falsehood, and indecent desires. Hildegard describes this constancy, or “abiding” as Jesus calls it in John 15:5, as “green vitality.”⁵² She exhorts her correspondents to remain spiritually “juicy,” to strive for “spiritual greenness” by abiding as branches connected to the vine.⁵³

Hildegard also contrasts the faithful, who possess “the sap of life,” producing good fruit, with those who are in a “drought of indolence.”⁵⁴ If viriditas embodies God’s lush, life-giving energy, then the opposite, ariditas, represents death and sin. Fox notes that for Hildegard, ariditas is “the sin of sins . . . the sin of drying up.”⁵⁵ The lack of viriditas “destroys our creative powers, marking the end of all good works, the beginning of laziness and carelessness.”⁵⁶ Hildegard declares: “Envy drives out all greening power!”⁵⁷

Significantly, Hildegard teaches that even the earth’s “greening power” is affected by spiritual forces, either nourished by God’s moisture or drained into a dry and dusty land.⁵⁸ Those who refuse to grow in virtue, are “cut off from the waters of faith,”⁵⁹ and fail to bloom. They wither and die. This spiritual ariditas affects the world around us, diminishing the overall greening of God’s grace. Hildegard challenges her readers: “How dare we live without the verdancy of God’s grace?”⁶⁰

Going Green

When humans reject God’s viriditas, all creation suffers. This interdependence and reciprocity between humanity and creation naturally lead Hildegard to reflect on the deep impact that humans have on the earth. Unbelievers, “the people who were meant to be green,”⁶¹ spread filth and destruction. Just as God gave creation for our use, he also “permits creation to punish humanity.”⁶² She reminds us of God’s warning to Israel, linking human faithfulness with the health of the land.⁶³ She vividly warns: “The winds are burdened by the utterly awful stink of evil. . . . The air belches out the filthy uncleanness of the peoples. . . . There pours forth an unnatural, a loathsome darkness that withers the green.”⁶⁴ Sin affects the food we eat, the air quality, and brings about the extinction of species. The earth is rendered “incapable of sustaining humanity.”⁶⁵ Hildegard pleads: “The earth should not be injured. The earth should not be destroyed!”⁶⁶

Understanding viriditas as the pulsing green vein of God’s grace results in an ecological awareness that marries spirituality with stewardship.⁶⁷ Mary DeJong, an eco-theologian, sums up Hildegard’s creation theology as “a way of knowing that involved integrating the soul and soil. Creation is not a scenic backdrop designed only so humans can take the stage. Creation is in fact a full participant in human transformation.”⁶⁸ Nature speaks to us of our Creator⁶⁹ and eagerly anticipates our joint redemption.⁷⁰

God tasked humans to care for his creation because creation care is reciprocal.⁷¹ Robert Shore-Goss, a pastor reflecting on the dedication of new solar panels for his church, asserts that it is impossible to separate “Christ from the social responsibility for the Earth.”⁷² Hildegard would concur; she believed that “Christ brings lush greenness to shriveled and wilted people” as part of his greening of the cosmos.⁷³ Her theology of viriditas calls believers to pray for creation, to mourn its losses, to safeguard its survival, and to celebrate in song for the green earth.⁷⁴

Hildegard’s final words bring her theology full circle. The woman who saw viriditas as the lifeblood of creation departed this world praying, “Let the rainfall be grace. Let this green earth take me.” If she bled green in life, in death she rested in green grace.⁷⁵

Notes

1. Matthew Fox, “Hildegard on Greening Power, Spirit, Nature & Creativity,” Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox (Jan 11, 2024).
2. Michael Embach, “The Life of Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179),” in The Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Jennifer Bain (Cambridge University Press, 2021) 17.
3. Hildegard of Bingen, Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs, ed. Matthew Fox, trans. Robert Cunningham (Bear and Co., 1987), Foreword; James Ginther, “Hildegard of Bingen’s Theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Jennifer Bain, 89.
4. Constant J. Mews, “Religious Thinker,” in Voice of the Living Light: Hildegard of Bingen and Her World, ed. Barbara Newman (University of California Press, 1998) 53.
5. Mews, “Religious Thinker,” 53.
6. Mews, “Religious Thinker,” 201.
7. Embach, “The Life of Hildegard,” 11.
8. Matthew Fox, Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen (Bear and Co., 2002) 45.
9. Peter Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 1984) 148.
10. Allison Jaines Elledge, “You Are What You Eat: Hildegard of Bingen’s Viriditas,” Conference paper, Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association meeting (Oct 2010) 7.
11. Mews, “Religious Thinker,” 58.
12. Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology (Baker Academic, 2013) 265.
13. Fox, Illuminations of Hildegard, 43.
14. Robert E. Shore-Goss, “Grace is Green: Green Incarnational Inclusivities,” in Queering Christianity: Finding a Place at the Table for LGBTQI Christians, ed. Robert E. Shore-Goss, Thomas Bohache, Patrick S. Cheng, Mona West (Praeger, 2013) 70.
15. Fox, Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs, Vision One: 2.
16. Fox, Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs, Vision One: 2.
17. “Hildegard von Bingen, Part 2: Her Big Idea,” Notable Women: Women in the Waldorf Community and Beyond (May 27, 2013).
18. “Hildegard von Bingen, Part 2: Her Big Idea,” Notable Women, 16.
19. “Hildegard von Bingen, Part 3: Makeover your Mind,” Notable Women: Women in the Waldorf Community and Beyond (June 22, 2013).
20. Fox, Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs, Vision Four: 11.
21. Elledge, “You Are What You Eat,” 3–4.
22. Priscilla Throop, trans., Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica: The Complete English Translation of her Classic Work on Health and Healing (Healing Arts Press, 1998).
23. Fox, Illuminations of Hildegard, 130.
24. Psalm 104:1-2 (NIV): “Bless the LORD, O my soul! O LORD my God, You are very great; You are clothed with splendor and majesty. He wraps Himself in light as with a garment; He stretches out the heavens like a tent . . .”
25. Gabriele Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen (Bear and Co., 1983) 18.
26. Fox, Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs, Song #11: De Sancto Disibodo: In Honor of St. Disibode.
27. Carmen Acevedo Butcher, St. Hildegard of Bingen: Doctor of the Church (Paraclete, 2013) 160.
28. Elledge, “You Are What You Eat,” 3.
29. Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, 19.
30. Fox, Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs, Letter One: Hildegard to Bernard of Clairvaux.
31. Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, 28.
32. Mews, “Religious Thinker,” 60.
33. Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, 25.
34. Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, 26.
35. Fox, Illuminations of Hildegard, 12.
36. Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, 26.
37. Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, “The Cosmic Christ,” Center for Action and Contemplation (Nov 5, 2015).
38. Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, 16.
39. Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, 22–23.
40. Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, 23.
41. Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, 41.
42. Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, 42.
43. Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, 26.
44. Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, 26.
45. Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, 25.
46. Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, 29.
47. Elizabeth A. Dreyer, Passionate Spirituality: Hildegard of Bingen and Hadewijch of Brabant (Paulist, 2005) 77.
48. Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, 29.
49. Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, 21.
50. Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, 25.
51. Fox, Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs, Vision Ten: 2.
52. Fox, Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs, Vision Two: 18.
53. Dreyer, Passionate Spirituality, 82.
54. Fox, Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs, Vision Two: 18.
55. Fox, Illuminations of Hildegard, 92.
56. Fox, Illuminations of Hildegard, 92.
57. Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, 21.
58. Fox, Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs, Vision Four: 1.
59. Fox, Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs, 93.
60. Fox, Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs, 23.
61. Fox, Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs, 23.
62. Fox, Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs, 23.
63. Exod 23:10–11; Lev 18:26–28, 25:2–5, 26:3–4; Num 35:33–34; Chr 7:13–14; Ps 107:33–34; Isa 24:4–6; 2 Jer 2:7, 3:2–3, 12:11.
64. Fox, Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs, 23.
65. Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, 23.
66. Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, 9.
67. Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, 25.
68. Mary DeJong, “A Holy High: How Hildegard Found Her Inspiration Grounded in the Garden,” The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology (August 2021).
69. Ps 19:1; Luke 19:40; Rom 1:20.
70. Rom 8:19–22.
71. Gen 2:15.
72. Shore-Goss, “Grace is Green,” 65.
73. Jean Evans, “Viriditas and Veritas: The Ecological Prophets Hildegard of Bingen and Miriam Therese MacGillis, OP” (Jan 28, 2009).
74. Ps 96:11–13, 148:1–10; Isa 55:12.
75. Hildegard of Bingen on her deathbed, Sept 1179. Stella Nesanovich, “Let this green earth,” First Things (April 1996).