This article first appeared in Our Sunday Visitor magazine. Subscribe to receive the monthly magazine here.
Because we are made in the image and likeness of God, humans are naturally creative. We can’t fashion things ex nihilo, out of nothing, as only God can, but we do, on a daily basis, generate things that are new. As Pope St. John Paul II puts it in his 1999 Letter to Artists, we “(shape) the wondrous ‘material’ of (our) own humanity and then (exercise) creative dominion over the universe which surrounds (us).” This assessment applies in a particular way to those gifted in the fine arts. But in a broader sense, it applies to us all.
It is easy to think of only those who can draw, paint, sculpt, sing or dance as creative. To be creative is to be generative or “fruitful,” as we read in the Book of Genesis. When we look to the life of the Benedictine mystic St. Hildegard of Bingen (circa 1098-1179), we see that creativity is much more than that; its fruitfulness extends far beyond the fine arts.
One of the four female Doctors of the Church, St. Hildegard received visions starting at age 3. She grew up with a very personal understanding of God and his love. St. Hildegard’s writings include three volumes of visionary theology, almost seventy musical compositions with accompanying poetic texts, a morality play and nine books on science and medicine. She also created her own alphabet and led her religious community as abbess. It’s almost simpler to list what she didn’t do.
We can look at her life and marvel at all she achieved, but I think St. Hildegard would challenge that take: It was not she who accomplished that litany of works, but God who accomplished these and more through her.
What does it mean to be creative?
In the same letter mentioned above, Pope St. John Paul II also wrote that, “With loving regard, the divine Artist passes on to the human artist a spark of his own surpassing wisdom, calling him to share in his creative power.” For St. Hildegard, that was expressed in composing music, but it was also expressed in excellent administration of her community. It was expressed in writing a play and it was expressed in studying plants and animals to understand their healing properties.
Today, we might separate these aptitudes into a hierarchy ordered by perceived usefulness. And to what end? When we narrow our understanding of what it means to be creative, we run the risk of minimizing the gifts God has given us and not fully employing them for his glory.
St. Hildegard called attention to the connectedness and the presence of God in all things. Her ability to see the whole picture of creation in such a way surely contributed to how she used her gifts to guide souls toward God and help them strive toward heaven.
Should our gifts lie in the fine arts, science, business, education, homemaking or elsewhere, may we, with St. Hildegard’s intercession, cultivate and share them in our own varied songs of thanks and praise.
