Today's Saint is another one suggested by my sister, Tonya. A German Mystic of the twelfth century, St. Hildegard was a prolific writer in many subjects including theology, botany and medicine as well as poetry and music.
Hildegard was born around 1098 - the exact date is uncertain. She joined a Benedictine monastery as a teenager. She had received visions since the time she was three, but she hesitated to tell anyone about them. At the age of 42, Hildegard received a vision she believed to be an instruction from God, to "write down that which you see and hear." She finally spoke of her visions to her Spiritual Director, who ordered her to write them down. It took ten years to write her Scivias (Know the Ways). The Pope read it and encouraged her to continue writing. Her writings include lives of saints; two treatises on medicine and natural history, and extensive correspondence.
Hildegard was one of the first persons for whom the formalized canonization process was applied, but four attempts at canonization were unsuccessful and she remained at the status of Beatified until 2012. In May of that year, Pope Benedict XVI extended the cult of St. Hildegard in a process called "equivalent canonization." Five months later, he named her a Doctor of the Church.
Her feast day is September 17.
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