Greenness

          Spring is one of my favorite seasons of the year. Each year I have waited and watched for the first violet and the first daffodil. This spring, however, something changed. It was the grass that caught and held my attention. I stood in front of our monastery and looked around in amazement and delight at the greenness of the grass. I don’t remember ever having seen it look so green. When I casually mentioned that to a friend she gave me a book about St. Hildegard of Bingen, a highly gifted and holy Benedictine woman who lived in the twelfth century. 

           One of Hildegard’s terms may have given a name to what I was sensing. For greenness she uses the Latin word viriditas which is a dynamic and energetic word. According to Hildegard this viriditas enters into the very fabric of the universe. The world in the height of the spring season is filled with it. Even “the smallest twig on the most insignificant tree is animated with viriditas.” (God breathed the breath of viriditas into Adam and Eve, of course, but that is subject for another blog!) Finally, Hildegard writes, it is the sun that brings the life of viriditas into the world. That thought is beautiful to me and immediately my mind transfers “the sun” into “the Son”. 

            Our monastery, like Hildegard’s, is enclosed by trees of all shapes and sizes and shades of green. All are rooted deeply, except for the newly planted saplings, in earth covered by a blanket of green. We sisters find it a blessing to gather in chapel four times daily to praise the Creator from whom all greenness comes.

        Sr. Justina Franxman, OSB