I took a deep, steadying breath as I walked to the pulpit, remembering the words of the 12th-century Benedictine nun and mystic Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179): “I am a feather on the breath of God.” This phrase had become my mantra as I went through sudden and painful job loss, unexpected surgeries, and relationship issues.
Hildegard herself was almost constantly ill and lived during a tumultuous time in the church and surrounded by politically warring factions. She called out corruption in the church, sending admonishing letters to bishops and popes, as well as to kings who she felt were turning away from God and abandoning their people—all while she was receiving visions from God, the “Living Light” as she called it, compelling her to share them.
If Hildegard, as a female visionary in the 12th century, could heed God’s call, then I could certainly preach a 12-minute sermon that might upset a few people. My stakes were much lower in a little-known church somewhere in the United States than for someone like Hildegard, who could have lost her life proclaiming what she believed God was asking her to share.
Mysticism has been part of how I understand my own connection to God for over 20 years. I was introduced to Christian mystics when I attended a class at my Jesuit graduate school focused on St. Teresa of Ávila, St. John of the Cross, and St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order. It was here that I finally received language and connection to how I was experiencing God in my prayer life. My Jesuit priest-professor told us that being a mystic simply meant having a profound experience of God. This meant that anyone could have a mystical experience and possibly identify as a mystic.
I began doing my own exploration of mystics, and my soul was filled with poetry and arrested by their visions:
- Julian of Norwich: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
- Meister Eckhart: “Every creature is a word of God and is a book about God.”
- The anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing: “That’s why I’m willing to abandon everything I know, to love the one thing I cannot think. [God] can be loved, but not thought.”
- Theresa of Ávila: “The important thing is not to think much but to love much. So start doing whatever most stirs you to love.”
What I noticed about the mystics is their singular devotion to listening to God and sharing what they were hearing, like prophets of their own time. Of course, scripture has all sorts of mystical language and experience, especially in the visions of the prophets:
- Jeremiah with his foundational visions of the almond branch and the pot of boiling water;
- Isaiah’s visions of God on the throne, the suffering servant, the Messiah, and world peace;
- Ezekiel and the throne-chariot, dry bones coming to life, and God’s restored Jerusalem; to name a few.
We know that it was not easy to be a prophet and that sometimes it ended in violent death. However, the responsibility for passing on God’s message was so compelling that prophets and mystics (sometimes they were both) had to share it. In the words of Hildegard:
And behold! In the forty-third year of my earthly course, as I was gazing with great fear and trembling attention at a heavenly vision, I saw a great splendor in which resounded a voice from Heaven, saying to me,
“O fragile human, ashes of ashes, and filth of filth! Say and write what you see and hear. … And write them not by yourself or any other human being, but by the will of Him Who knows, sees and disposes all things in the secrets of His mysteries.”
But I, though I saw and heard these things, refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words, not with stubbornness but in the exercise of humility, until, laid low by the scourge of God, I fell upon a bed of sickness; then, compelled at last by many illnesses … I set my hand to writing.
… And again I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me, “Cry out therefore, and write thus!” (Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, “Declaration,” pp. 59–61)
Hildegard’s witness has given me courage to preach, to stand up in ways that God called me to, and to come to terms with my own limitations. Have you, dear preacher, ever had that niggling voice inside that wouldn’t go away? That idea for preaching that terrified you and is also what God wants you to say? Hildegard would get physically ill when she did not write down her visions as God instructed. There is a physical aspect to our spiritual cowardice. Jesus never said that the road to follow him would be easy. This is where the mystics are especially meaningful since they declared their weird and wonderful visions while also experiencing physical and social trials.
Perhaps this is why their stories are the most inspiring—they take us beyond the normal scope of theology, with visions that are as provocative as Jesus’s parables and as strange as the stories of prophets. Mystics give us courage to preach God’s vision and live into the fullness of God’s call.
