Fides Quaerens Intellectum: O vox perspicua: A Chronogram for the Feast of St. Hildegard

Saturday, September 12, 2026

O vox perspicua: A Chronogram for the Feast of St. Hildegard

Scivias 1.1, from the
Rupertsberg manuscript
(12th cen.)

O VoX perspICVa,
DIC nobIs peCCatorIbVs hebetIs
De IntroItV InCorrVptae saLVatIonIs,
qVatenVs Fons aqVae Vitae
ab effVsIone IrrIgatIonIs tVae VIsIonIs
In IgnaVIs peCtorIbVs sICCIsqVe nostrIs
sVrgat et effLVat.

O clear-eyed voice,
speak to us sluggish sinners
of the origin of pure salvation,
that from the outpouring of your vision’s watering
the font of the water of life
might rise up and overflow
in our dried up, torpid hearts.

(O vox perspicua, dic nobis peccatoribus hebetis de introitu incorruptae salvationis, quatenus fons aquae vitae ab effusione irrigationis tuae visionis in ignavis pectoribus siccisque nostris surgat et effluat.)

Existential threats to human society seem to abound these days—we’ve known about the crisis of human-caused climate change for quite a while, but the advent of Artificial Intelligence has entered the race now, too. Apathy, however, seems to be the greatest threat of them all: too many people just don’t care enough about the problems facing the world to want to do anything to solve them.

When St. Hildegard of Bingen looked around at her world in the twelfth century, she too saw a people with their heads buried in the sand. Dried-up, sluggish, and self-involved: that’s how her visionary voice characterizes the state of the world at the beginning of her first work, Scivias. But that’s precisely why she had to start speaking out and writing. Here’s God’s commission to her in that first vision:

“O human, who are fragile dust of the earth and ashes of ashes! Cry out and speak of the origin of pure salvation [clama et dic de introitu incorruptae salvationis] until those people are instructed, who, though they see the inmost contents of the Scriptures, do not wish to tell them or preach them, because they are lukewarm and sluggish [tepidi et hebetes] in serving God’s justice. Unlock for them the enclosure of mysteries that they, timid as they are, conceal in a hidden and fruitless field. Burst forth into a fountain of abundance and overflow with mystical knowledge, until they who now think you contemptible because of Eve’s transgression are stirred up by the flood of your irrigation [ab effusione irritationis tuae]. For you have received your profound insight not from humans, but from the lofty and tremendous Judge on high, where this calmness will shine strongly with glorious light among the shining ones.”
—Scivias 1.1 (trans. Hart and Bishop)

This commission inspired my chronogram prayer for this year’s Feast of St. Hildegard. It asks the Visionary Doctor to continue to speak prophetically to us, that her clear-sighted words might shake us out of our stupor and inspire us to look again to the truth of salvation. As Pope Leo reminded us just this month, in his message and prayer for the 11th World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, Christ has offered us the living water, to refreshen and renew our hearts to that salvation.

About the Chronogram

The chronogram is an epigrammatic form where, if you take all of the letters that are also Roman numerals (I, V[U], X, L, C, D, and M, which are capitalized in the prayer above) and add their values together, the result is the year you are commemorating. In this case, 2 D’s = 1000, + 8 C’s = 1800, + 2 L’s = 1900, + 1 X = 1910, + 18 V[U]’s = 2000, + 26 I’s = 2026. I was inspired to write chronograms to honor Hildegard by those composed by Sr. Walburga Storch, O.S.B., a nun of the Abbey of St. Hildegard in Eibingen, Germany, which appeared in Festschriften for the Sibyl of the Rhine in 1979 and 1998.

Here are links to previous chronograms I have composed for St. Hildegard: