In 1106 Hildebert and Mechthilde of Bingen gave their eight year-old daughter Hildegard to the church. Hildegard was their tenth child, and her parents gave her as a tithe to the Benedictine community at Disibodenberg, near present day Mainz in Germany. Little is known of Hildegard’s life between then and 1136, although she seems to have been something of a prodigy in the religious life. Unlike most children of her time, she grew and developed within a small closed circle. Indeed, in her first years at Disibodenberg, she was literally “enclosed” with an older nun, Jutta, and interacted with very few people. Later she related that the vivid visions of God that she had throughout her life began during those early years. As she came of age under the Benedictine rule, Hildegard learned how to read and write and studied Scripture and theology. She also learned to play and compose music. In 1136, at the age of thirty-eight, she was named a magistra, a “teacher” of the church, and became prioress of a new Benedictine community.
Hildegard lived until 1179. As an adult, she founded other communities, lobbied princes and senior prelates, including popes, in support of her communities, counseled abbots and abbesses, and travelled widely in Europe. She composed music that is still sung today, invented an alternative alphabet, and wrote three books of her visions, a drama, and a treatise on the physical sciences, all while leading the various communities that she had founded. When she died at the age of eighty-one, Hildegard was one of the best known women in central Europe.
Today’s gospel story suggests that Jesus may also have been something of a religious prodigy, and that Hildegard and he shared similar early experiences. Curiously, Luke is the only one to tell us anything of Jesus’ “hidden years,” the years between his birth, which we celebrated on Christmas Eve, and his baptism at about the age of thirty, which we will celebrate next week. As he relates Jesus’ first spoken words in the gospels, Luke clearly suggests that there is something different about this twelve year-old boy. He can engage in theological debate with religious scholars and impress them. He understands that his true father is not Joseph but God. Most important, he senses, even at this young age, what his true calling is, as he reminds his parents that, “I must be in my Father’s house.”
However, in Luke’s narrative, Jesus is still clearly an adolescent boy. Unlike the other evangelists, Luke emphasizes Jesus’ humanity. Throughout his narrative, Luke wants his readers to understand that Jesus may be the Word made flesh, but he is also fully human. Although he is aware of his calling, Jesus here is also a surly adolescent who causes his parents great anxiety and then arrogantly chides them when they express that anxiety. However, having made his point, Jesus then becomes obedient to his human parents, even if they don’t understand who he is or what his calling might be. To ready himself for his public ministry as an adult, he returns to Nazareth to continue growing. As with Hildegard, none of the evangelists tells us what else happened during these “hidden years,” except that, like Hildegard, Jesus “grew in wisdom and years, and in divine and human favor.”
So what lessons do we take from the life of Hildegard of Bingen and the gospel lesson for today? The first lesson is obvious to all parents and to all who look seriously at their own lives: growth takes time. Hildegard spent thirty years, from eight to thirty-eight, living in the convent at Disibodenberg. Jesus also went through childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood in Nazareth. At least eighteen years elapsed between the time of the story we just heard and the time that Jesus was baptized and began his public ministry, years during which he presumably continued to study Torah, perhaps learned Joseph’s trade of carpentry, and observed his family and friends.
Growth takes time, even if you’re Jesus or Hildegard. Sometimes we want to skip the long phase of growing. Don’t we all know children who are twelve going on twenty? Or we think we have to be fully formed spiritually from the get go. When the priest pours the water on our heads, or the bishop lays on hands, we will understand every sentence of the Nicene Creed! When we learn a new spiritual discipline, we want to do it perfectly right away. When we try a new ministry, we want to get it right immediately. But God is not in a hurry. Instead, God works with us patiently, training us and helping us as we continue to grow. Often God works within us secretly, and we discover that the growth that we long for has actually somehow happened. Indeed, some spiritual writers even suggest that, if we knew God were at work in us, transforming and changing us, we would resist God or try to control the process!
Here’s the second lesson: sometimes in order to grow we have to submit ourselves to our inferiors, or to people who don’t really understand us. Hildegard’s first caretaker Jutta had nowhere near Hildegard’s spiritual abilities, yet she was an able teacher for the little Hildegard. Later, Hildegard was subject to the discipline and teaching of the other nuns, abbots, and prelates. Jesus too was subject to his parents, even though they didn’t understand who their son truly was. Yet, they were able to see that he studied Torah and had the skills necessary for his adult ministry.
All of us, of course, were subject to our own parents, even though they often didn’t understand us, and even though some of us did not become the people they expected us to become. Often we find that we must obey employers, spouses, coaches, military commanders, spiritual directors, and others. Read sometime Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, for a delightful account of Twain’s training as a river boat pilot, and all he had to endure under the various pilots under whom he served. We may feel that those to whom we are subject are not our spiritual, moral, or intellectual equals. Yet unless we experience physical or psychological abuse, we may have much to learn from those who have authority over us.
The third lesson: we need God’s grace. Throughout her life, Hildegard knew herself to be deeply dependent on God’s grace. Although the gospels do not always say so explicitly, Jesus too knew himself to be dependent on God’s grace. We are not alone. We can prepare the way for God’s leading and God’s deepening influence in our lives, but we cannot manufacture growth – any more than a child or a tree can cause itself to grow. Without God we can do virtually nothing; with God we can grow and develop beyond what we might expect or even imagine.
And finally: our growth is always for a purpose. Ultimately, any growth and development for good that we experience, any growth that is led by God, fits us to be stronger partners in God’s mission, in bringing God’s reign closer. Hildegard grew during her “hidden years” and became a great foundress, counselor, theologian, musician, and artist. The church is still benefiting from her legacy. Jesus grew into his public ministry and all that that ministry entailed. He could not stay in the Temple but was eventually sent by God into the world to announce the nearness of God’s reign and to demonstrate in the flesh what God’s reign looks like.
We too are meant to grow into our own ministries. That’s really what Christian formation is all about. Just as almost all of us have continued to mature since we left our parents’ houses, so too are we called to continue to grow in our Christian lives. We are called both to deepen our relationship with God and, through our relationship with God, to be better equipped to minister to others, both inside the church and outside the church, both individually and corporately. How are we doing? Are we growing and maturing as individuals? As a parish? What has God been fitting us to do?
It is a new secular year, and a relatively new church year. Instead of your usual new year’s resolutions, I invite you to take some time to sit with these questions. How do you envision God helping you to grow this year? What do you ask of God to help you as you grow in a new year? What would you like God to teach you?
“I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ … may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for those who believe.” Living and growing in Disibodenberg, Hildegard would have studied these words from Paul’s letter to the Ephesian Christians. As she took these words to heart and grew as God’s servant, may we too be ready to grow in our ability and desire to follow where God leads us.
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