In the selected passage, she cautions the layperson against the dangers of separating the world into the secular and the sacred. During a time when the religious life appeared reserved for those who resided within the convents and monasteries, Hildegard invites the Christian to participate in the spiritual, not through the same rigorous disciplines expected of the religious community, but rather through obedience to the commandments. Living well becomes a live option for all who wish to seek and find God in their daily experience.
How might we experience or claim these same sacred/secular distinctions that Christians claimed in Hildegard’s time?
Do you find yourself “forgetting” as Hildegard points out to this community of laypeople that they are “forgetting”?
In what ways do you find your community, your church, or your family responding to the standards of the time? How might Hildegard’s answer of “living well” resound in those communities?
**Next week, we'll read Aldofo Quezada, Loving Yourself for God's Sake, pp 246-250, in Spiritual Classics.**
3 comments:
keep them coming, helpful
"But you say: It is not our job to live a good, disciplined life. That is the business of priests and those who are in religious communities . . . there is something which is important for you to hear: More than all these clergy, you are bound as God has commanded, to live in that way which was declared to you... "
Thank you Hildegard. The scrutiny with which we quickly destroy the lives of the ordained for even minor infractions of standards stands in stark contrast to the quick willingness with which we frequently apply different standards to the unordained. Living our faith by every measure is incumbant upon us all, lay and ordained. Failing is painful and should be dealt with in appropriate ways. However, the current and ancient notion that the "good, disciplined life" is for those who choose vows must sooner of later pass aside if our communities are going to all "live honorably".
I forget that my daily obligations of family, work, the mundane, are opportunities to live rightly in God's good order for me. It's easy for me to think of the spiritual life as something separate from the daily life. Hildegard reminds me that they are one and the same. It's an interesting notion that I am commanded by God to live in very particular ways--even more than those who are ordained. I'll have to think about what that really means for me.
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