Only the guys present at the meeting know Simon\u2019s real name, and I\u2019d like to keep it that way. But I\u2019ll offer you some other data that Simon offered this morning, quite openly. Simon was walking around Paris in the middle of the night about twenty years ago when he saw a doorway. He entered the doorway and found a Perpetual Adoration chapel and a monastery next door. Simon said he has returned to Paris \u201cat least a dozen times\u201d since then, for the sole purpose of returning to that chapel. After the meeting I asked Simon what he was doing wandering around Paris in the middle of the night. \u201cDrunk?\u201d I asked. \u201cDrugged? Psychotic?\u201d He only nodded, as if to say, all of the above.<\/p>\n Who better, then, to hem and haw his way through a heart-felt but wildly improvisational presentation on a 12th-century saint (or blessed) (Simon wasn\u2019t really clear) whose Wikipedia entry includes the following bullet points: Christian mystic, German Benedictine abbess, author, counselor, linguist, naturalist, scientist, philosopher, physician, herbalist, poet, channeler, visionary, composer, and polymath. I had already encountered Hildegard through her remarkable music. (I\u2019m listening to the CD \u201cCanticles of Ecstasy\u201d right now and would happily listen to her an hour a day for the duration.) The bullet point that had previously grabbed my attention, mentioned later in the Wiki entry: Hildegard is the first composer, male or female, of whom we have a contemporaneous biography.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been corresponding with my new friend and blogging pal Frank<\/a> about the subject of war and the Church\u2019s teaching on war<\/a>. Frank, a retired US Marine with all the military bona fides you could want, pointed me in the direction of Bernard of Clairvaux, because Bernard was both the founder of the Cistercians (contemplative, pacifist) and a leading proponent of the Second Crusade (active, pugnacious). Reading about Bernard during the past 24 hours, I think I\u2019ve found a model for how a Catholic might look at both pacifism and what the Catechism terms \u201cjust war.\u201d<\/p>\n And who\u2014it turns out, according to Simon\u2014was one of Bernard of Clairvaux\u2019s 12th-century pals? None other than our Hildegard of Bingen!<\/p>\n This is what I love about Catholicism. You meet the strangest people, from those in your parish (Simon) to those in the martyrology (Hildegard). You find these strange people conversing with one another, studying each other, mutually fascinated and fascinating\u2014and constantly connecting with other equally strange and fascinating people. There are so many of these people to be met\u2014some far stranger than others, but all of them fixed on the same teaching, the same Gospel, within the same Universal Catholic Church\u2014that you are forced to one of two conclusions, and there is no other.<\/p>\n Either (a) the whole world is mad and wandering around in a psychotic daze in Paris in the middle of the night or (b) Jesus Christ is Lord.<\/p>\n You would never, ever find this in the basement of an Episcopal Church, what I found in the basement of St. Mary Star of the Sea Church during this morning\u2019s men\u2019s group\u2014my friend \u201cSimon,\u201d presenting an hour-long bobbing, weaving, juking, and jiving meditation on Hildegard of Bingen. Hildegard may be a darling of the New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_dmDaLWNETzg\/SxFFOdul0AI\/AAAAAAAAAkA\/Z1Z2Yz6-rHk\/s320\/Hildegard\")
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