Some of her rebukes were embarrassingly practical. To men she wrote, "One who burns strongly in lust while either asleep or awake should take care not to add flame to his fire. How? Let him not inflame himself by those foods that stir up lust. He should humbly abstain from the flesh of animals that come forth from their mothers naked and without covering, that is, beef and meat; for there is a fire of heat in them that is not as great in the flesh of birds, which are born not uncovered but as an egg covered with a shell, and therefore they have less inflammatory power." Basically, curb your lust by eating more chicken.
Hildegard was passionate about virtue, understanding it as the gift of God accessible to any with the will to want it. "When anger tries to burn up the temple of my body," she wrote, "I look to God's goodness and will become sweeter than the breeze whose gentleness moistens the earth. I'll look to the God of peace, because then I'll have spiritual joy as the virtues begin to show themselves in me. . . . And when hatred tries to diminish who I am, I'll look to the kindness of Christ and to the pain he bore. I'll accept the thorns that give off the delicate fragrance of roses. They grew to honor the One who was faithful, and by controlling myself, I'll bring honor to my Lord."
Hildegard's life was one interwoven with a worship and obedience that acknowledged God as the only one worthy of her trust. It was her worship, her mystical experience of God in prayer and praise, and her suffering obedience as the fruit of that worship that grounded her identity as one loved by God. Indeed worship and obedience realign our priorities, they supply us with joy, give us hope, shape our ethics, and encourage us with power to confront our own troubles as well as the abuses and injustices of our own world. King David, as he came up against his own troubles and enemies, fought them first by singing to God. "Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge—You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing." "My heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay." These words from Psalm 16 get applied to Christ, but in Christ they apply to all who believe in him. "You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand."
By our worship and obedience, we acknowledge that there exists in the universe power that we do not manage, cannot control, and do not sustain. Power to which we can only submit. Worship and obedience signal your submission to God, a submission that compels us to live as salt and light in the world, devoted to mission and to the work of justice and righteousness, to ethics of honesty and simplicity, to helping the least and the lost; to exposing the works of darkness and loosing the bonds of sin and Satan, and to suffering for the gospel. Such was Hildegard's life. Such is the life of every Christian—a life that grows out of the worship of God.
"You, all-accomplishing Word of the Father, are the light of primordial daybreak over the spheres. You, the foreknowing mind of divinity, foresaw all your works as you willed them, your prescience hidden in the heart of your power, your power like a wheel around the world, whose circling never began and never slides to an end."
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