So Great a Cloud: Hildegard, Augustine, Perpetua, and Felicity

Holy Wisdom

is already at work among you, searching for her lost coins; God is building you up into a house in which the Spirit is pleased to dwell.

Your life can be a song of praise better than any hymn; your life can be danced to the rhythm of the love of God better than dancers keep time with their bodies and their feet.

You are the branches of Christ the vine; God is cultivating you like an orchard of tree, causing growth, producing buds, putting strength in the branches, clothing you with leaves and loading you with fruit.

Illumination of Holy Wisdom by Hildegard von Bingen.

Quotation from Augustine’s sermon on the martyrs Perpetua and Felicity (found in Friends of God and Prophets by Elizabeth Johnson).