The Man, His Shadow, and the Tragedy of the Fallen

The Human Body before and after Original Sin according to Saint Hildegard of Bingen

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978), Mistero e malinconia di una strada, fanciulla con cerchio - Mystery and Melancholy of a Street, a girl with a hoop (source)

Spiritual Blindness

Over the past thirty years, the texts of several authors have always found a place on my desk. I read and reread them constantly, without tiring, striving to understand everything that those who left them to us as a legacy have conveyed most precious. Among these authors, Saint Hildegard of Bingen (c.1098–1179) holds one of the most important places. The depth of her visions, the subtlety of her remarks, the beauty of her prose and poems, along with the surprising interpretations she offers, sometimes compel me to re-read the same fragment dozens of times. For example, I have been meditating for many years on the answer given by the Benedictine abbess to the eighth question in the small volume Solutions to Thirty-Eight Questions:¹

What sort of bodies did the angels have when they appeared to Abraham and ate the flour, veal, butter, and milk that he set before them? (Question 8)

Although shorter than a page, Saint Hildegard’s meditation is so profound that it would require an entire book of explanations to fully clarify her words. Thus, first she shows that the angels took a human form when they appeared to Abraham because we, humans, after the original sin, can no longer directly see the angelic spirits as they are. Specifically, here is her explanation:

This is because of the disobedience of Adam, who was deprived of spiritual eyes in Paradise and transferred his own blindness to the whole of humankind. (Question 8)

And here is a longer explanation, from which we learn that the same eyes were transformed from spiritual to corporeal (i.e., carnal) eyes:

The first parents had spiritual eyes before the original sin, for then the soul had mastery over the body through innocence. But after the sin, when their eyes were deprived of spiritual vision and they were made mortal through the condition of sin, their carnal eyes were opened. (Question 6)

In another answer, we can find even more details that will help us gain a deeper understanding of the so-called ‘spiritual eyes,’ which in fact are not completely lost but only blinded by original sin and the subsequent opening of the ‘carnal eyes’ (i.e., empirical/sensory knowledge):

Spiritual eyes are the knowledge of the rational soul; they are by no means able to see corporeal things as they are, just as a blind person does not see with exterior eyes but knows and understands what is seen only through hearing. Moreover, corporeal eyes do not have the possibility to look upon the spiritual perfectly. But just as a human’s form is seen in a mirror although not being in the mirror, so the human sees and knows spiritual things through hearing words in faith. (Question 32)

From this extraordinarily dense fragment, we can learn many things regarding our current status as rational beings. First, as I have already mentioned, the ‘spiritual eyes’ have not vanished; rather, they were merely blinded and transformed into ‘carnal eyes.’ Second, the original pre-lapsarian (i.e., celestial-paradisiacal) knowledge was lost and replaced with an inferior form of understanding, in which rational knowledge has been deeply affected by its subordination to empirical knowledge. (Nota Bene: the consistent failure of the best Christian rationalists—such as the Saints John of Damascus, Anselm of Canterbury, and Thomas Aquinas—to provide a basis for the unity of the most brilliant minds around Scholasticism clearly shows that human rational knowledge is ‘blinded.’)

Actually, as I will show in other articles, our current knowledge is not exactly the same type of knowledge as that in Eden before the original sin. To give just one clue, it is enough to state that, before the fall, Adam and Eve did not acquire their rational knowledge through the mediation of phantasms—as both Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas rightly affirm regarding our current way of knowing things. In the terms of Saint Denys the Areopagite, human knowledge in Paradise was both linear—focused on God and His divine ‘reasons’ (i.e., Saint Maximus’s divine logoi of the creatures)—and circular, revolving among and around creatures to ascend toward their divine ‘reasons.’ But after the fall, our knowledge of created, fallen things is like wandering through a dark labyrinth, completely immersed in “the shadow of death” (Matthew 4:16). To help us in our wandering, God instituted the mystagogical language of sacred symbols and, above all, the most beneficial and precious context for learning it: the Holy Liturgy and the Holy Sacraments.

The purity of the original, pre-lapsarian intuition specific to our forefathers before the original sin was almost entirely lost. Yes, we still can use our reason, but this usage is so weak and inconsistent that we cannot firmly ground our epistemological efforts on it. That is why there is such a plethora of contradictory rationalistic philosophical schools—even within the Catholic Church—that are unable to harmonize many of their rational interpretations and arguments. Furthermore, even when we use our reason for very simple ‘exercises,’ such as presenting the basic arguments for the existence of God or the immortality of soul, we notice how difficult it is to make them clear to everyone.

The theme of Adam and Eve’s ‘blindness’ after consuming the fruit from the tree of knowledge in the middle of Eden is one of the most interesting and important for all of us. Saint Hildegard summarizes everything related to the consequences of original sin and its transmission using the symbolic image of the loss of spiritual eyes. This explains the most terrible tragedy we live through until we leave this passing, evanescent world: although God and spiritual beings are everywhere, we never see them. There is no drama comparable to the inability to see your Heavenly Father or to not be able to directly know your brothers and sisters in Paradise. Throughout this fleeting life, most of us pray to God, the Holy Virgin Mary, angels, and saints without ever seeing them. That is why God sometimes allows there to be saints who can see them, albeit rarely, in mystical ecstasies: to encourage us through their testimonies.

The part of Saint Hildegard’s commentary that fascinated me follows, however, after her explanation regarding the spiritual blindness of the proto-parents.

The Shadow of Creatures and the Heavenly Body

Surprisingly, she begins by presenting the significance of the shadows that accompany all beings in the fallen world:

Every creature (and the human is one) has a shadow of itself, which signifies that it must be made new for unfailing life.

This brief sentence made me reread Saint Hildegard’s commentary dozens of times. Only by linking the statement about the shadow’s significance with the description of how Eve’s body appeared in Paradise did I fully grasp its exceptional value. First, however, I understood what is relatively obvious: namely, that the presence of our shadow in our current post-lapsarian condition is a reminder that our mortal bodies are ‘fallen.’ Hence, we need—as Saint Paul would say—‘heavenly bodies,’ resurrected, which we will receive only at the Final Judgment. The implication of Saint Hildegard’s statement is extraordinary: if our shadows are meant to remind us of the necessity of resurrection, this implicitly means that our resurrected bodies will no longer have shadows. Such an idea helps us understand, as much as possible, what our condition will be after the resurrection. At the same time, it indicates how Adam and Eve looked before the original sin. This was revealed to me by reading one of the great visions recorded by Saint Hildegard in Scivias.

Here, based on the exceptional graces the prophetess received from God, she was given the opportunity to contemplate how our proto-parents looked before the fall. Eve, drawn from Adam’s rib, was like “a white cloud, which had come forth from a beautiful human form and contained within itself many and many stars because, in that place of delight, Eve – whose soul was innocent, for she had been raised our of innocent Adam, bearing in her body the whole multitude of the human race, shining with God’s preordination.”²

We immediately recognize how difficult it is to imagine how Eve looked based on Saint Hildegard’s description. At the same time, we understand where the difficulty comes from: because human nature before the fall had qualities that made it clearly different (and I emphasize: very different), from our current nature. If you want an image that can help us understand this difference, we have one proposed by Saint Macarius the Egyptian.

In one of his spiritual homilies, he compares the state of human nature to that of clear water, in which the gravel and silt lay undisturbed at the bottom. The crystalline liquid was perfectly transparent. By contrast, fallen human nature, after the original sin, is like water that has completely lost its transparency, becoming literally black (while still remaining the same nature). This is because the silt, gravel, and everything at the bottom of the water have entered an incredible state of agitation, transforming the water from a transparent medium into an opaque one.

The image of Eve’s prelapsarian transparent body, in which all her descendants could be seen like shining stars, is fascinating. It corresponds to the state of crystalline water before the fall—as described in Saint Macarius’s text. After the original sin, however, the water is completely disturbed, opaque, full of the ‘mud’ of death that entered—through the devil’s envy—both the world and man. This is revealed to us by another visionary mystic: Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich. In her book about the life of the Savior Christ and the mysteries of the Old Testament, we find a sentence describing both the terrain of Eden and the vegetation of that blessed land:

They were all, like everything else in nature, transparent as if formed of light.³

This image is also very suggestive. However, like the image of Eve’s body in Saint Hildegard’s vision, we must consider it more symbolic. For, let’s admit it: in our present state, we know nothing similar to Adam and Eve as they were in Paradise before the fall. Therefore, we have no term of comparison between the current—mortal—state of our bodies and that of the proto-parents—who were immortal.

Anyway, now—after seeing the teachings of visionaries and mystics like Saint Hildegard, Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, and Saint Macarius the Egyptian—we can understand why we have shadows after the fall: because our bodies (due to the ‘mutation’ suffered by our nature after the original sin) are opaque. In contrast, heavenly bodies, transparent and subtle, do not have shadows. They allow the divine grace’s light to pass through without any obstacle from the souls of the blessed. Such bodies will be received by all the righteous at the final judgment. Let us now return to Saint Hildegard’s explanation regarding the three angels who visited Abraham.

The Aerial and Ephemeral Body of Angels

Considering our current condition, as beings blind to the spiritual world, the angels knew very well that they had to adapt to our physical eyes – the only ones through which we now see. And, Saint Hildegard comments, “just as the shadow of the human reveals his own image, so too the angels, who are invisible to humans because of their nature, appear visible to the ones to whom they are sent in human bodies that they assume from the air.” Thus, angels make themselves visible, and at the same time, audible and intelligible—speaking in words that Abraham could understand. Their bodies are volatile and temporary, meant only for their experience in our transient world, similar to our shadows that exist only as long as we live mortal lives. Additionally, the angels ate—politely, of course—what was set before them, but “their food vanishes like dew when it falls upon grain.”

After speaking about Abraham’s three visitors, Saint Hildegard points out that fallen angels, demons, act in the same way. Just as the devil did in Paradise by taking the form of a serpent, demons tempt us by assuming forms appropriate to the vices through which they attack us. Most often, they are content to use vicious individuals to spread their poison. Saint Hildegard reveals to us how spiritual beings interact with us, the fallen, and uses the example of the shadows that accompany us to show that, like them, angels manifest themselves—adapting temporarily to our current (deficient) capacity to perceive and know.

The message to be retained from meditating on our shadows refers to our ultimate goal: the Kingdom of Heaven. For the Teutonic visionary, the shadows we cast are a good opportunity to think on their significance from the perspective of the world beyond. Thus, indicating that we must become new people, “born again of water and the Holy Ghost” (John 3:5), implicitly shows us the path of virtues to follow. On this path, we must not allow any shadow to accompany us. In a metaphorical sense, these shadows can be understood as our sins: are they not the very “shadows” of our lives?

At the same time, in a mysterious way, we sustain, through a carnal way of life, the opacity that characterizes us at present. In contrast, regarding the saints, in those moments of grace when God deigns to reveal His chosen ones, He transforms them into luminous beings: hence, we see in old icons a magnificent halo around their heads. It is the sanctifying grace that sometimes becomes visible through their bodies “thinned” by asceticism and mortifications. Although they do not yet have resurrected bodies, even in this life, God performs such miracles to teach us something mysterious about the state after the Final Judgment. The incorrupt bodies of some saints are also signs of the incorruptibility and immortality of the future bodies of the righteous.

1. In the current article I always quote the following English translation: Hildegard of Bingen, Solutions to Thirty-Eight Questions, Translated by Beverly Mayne Kienzle with Jenny C. Bledsoe and Stephen H. Behnke, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 2014. Instead of indicating the page, I mention only the question number.

2. Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, Translated by Mother Colmba Hart and Jane Bishop, New York: Paulist Press, 1990, p. 77.

3. The Lowly Life and Bitter Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Blessed Mother together with the Mysteries of the Old Testament, Edited by Very Rev. C.E. Schmoger, C.SS.R., Volume II, New York: The Sentinel Press, 1914, Vol. II, p. 10.