Sunday, August 23, 2026: Today we celebrate starting at 3:45: The Emergence of the Divine Feminine: Hildegard Comes to Us Today Because We Need Her!

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1717 Yulupa Avenue, Santa Rosa 95405

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Passcode: 1234

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Emmaus Liturgy for 08/23/2026:The Emergence of the Divine Feminine

Hildegard Comes to Us Today Because We Need Her

Pat: Ring the Singing Bell: Let Us take a moment of silence to arrive then listen to the music of Hildegard of Bingen. 

Opening Song:  De Spirit Sancto -

English Lyrics: 

Holy Spirit, making life alive, moving in all things, root of all created being, the cosmos of every impurity, effacing guilt, anointing wounds. You are lustrous and praiseworthy life, You waken and re-awaken everything that is.

WELCOME & INTRODUCTION: Steve:

Dan V: “Hildegard of Bingen was an extraordinarily gifted woman who became a shining star in the spiritual and intellectual world of the twentieth century. Her dazzling creativity extended into the worlds of cosmology, natural science, theology, art, music and medicine. Not only did she believe vehemently in her own capacity to create but she frequently associated creativity with women. She felt that women were endowed with ‘greening power’ — that vitality and fertility inherent in all of fruit-bearing, flower-yielding nature. She also believed that if feminine soul-life was restricted or repressed, all of life would be affected and eventually run dry.

Hildegard gave us powerful gifts not only in her works but in the way she lived her life. Her daring career and her vision of the feminine encompassed a role for women that exceeded the limits of her day and perhaps even of our day. Hildegard’s life with its fullness of expression can be a prototype for the conscious feminine image emerging with more clear focus in this century — an image with the power to change life’s direction and meaning.”

OPENING PRAYER: Taken from one of Hildegard’s many Visions (Scivias)

All: I am the breeze that nurtures all things green, I am the rain 

coming from the dew that causes the grasses to laugh with joy of life.

I am the yearning for good.” Amen!

Penitential Rite: By Payton Hoegh

Pat: Loving Creator, You are a God who weeps. Your face has felt the touch of tears and, Because of the breadth and depth of your love, You know the sting of brokenness and suffering in this time of uncertainty and loss, 

As we face the fearful consequences of a changing climate, 

Grant us the courage to acknowledge that we have not loved as you called us to love. 

Teach us how to mourn so that we might remember how we are called to care. 

Give us the strength to grieve so that we might be moved to change. 

May our broken hearts, our tears and lament, 

Steel in us a commitment to repentance and guide us forward  

On the path to renewal, healing, and wholeness.

All:  Amen

Reader: 1st Reading: Hildegard recorded these words, spoken by God to her in a vision.

“I am the supreme and fiery force who kindled every living spark, and I breathed forth no deadly thing—yet I permit them to be. As I circle the whirling sphere with my upper wings (that is, with wisdom), rightly I ordained it. And I am the fiery life of the essence of God: I flame above the beauty of the fields; I shine in the waters; I burn in the sun, the moon, and the stars. And, with the airy wind, I quicken all things vitally by an unseen, all-sustaining life. For the air is alive in the verdure and the flowers; the waters flow as if they lived; the sun too lives in its light; and when the moon wanes it is rekindled by the light of the sun, as if it lived anew. Even the stars glisten in their light as if alive….

I flame above the beauty of the fields to signify the earth—the matter from which God made man. I shine in the waters to indicate the soul, for, as water suffuses the whole earth, the soul pervades the whole body. I burn in the sun and the moon to denote reason, and the stars are the innumerable words of reason.”

Listen to the words of God as spoken through Hildegard of Bingen

All: Thanks be to God

Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 138:1-2, 2-3, 6, 8

Reader: Lord, your love is eternal; do not forsake the work of your hands.

All:  Lord, your love is eternal; do not forsake the work of your hands.

I will give thanks to you, O LORD, with all my heart,

for you have heard the words of my mouth;

in the presence of the angels I will sing your praise;

I will worship at your holy temple.

All: Lord, your love is eternal; do not forsake the work of your hands.

I will give thanks to your name,

because of your kindness and your truth:

When I called, you answered me;

you built up strength within me.

All: Lord, your love is eternal; do not forsake the work of your hands.

The LORD is exalted, yet the lowly he sees,

and the proud he knows from afar.

Your kindness, O LORD, endures forever; forsake not the work of your hands.

All: Lord, your love is eternal; do not forsake the work of your hands.

Second Reading:  The Eternal Feminine — the opening of Teilhard de Chardin’s essay, “The Eternal Feminine.”

“When the world was born, I came into being. Before the centuries were made, I issued from the hand of God—half-formed, yet destined to grow in beauty from age to age, the handmaid of his work.

Everything in the universe is made by union and generation—by the coming together of elements that seek out one another, melt together two by two, and are born again in a third.

God instilled me into the initial multiple as a force of condensation and concentration.

In me is seen that side of beings by which they are joined as one, in me the fragrance that makes them hasten together and leads them, freely and passionately, along their road to unity.

Through me, all things have their movement and are made to work as one.

I am the beauty running through the world to make it associate in ordered groups: the ideal held up before the world to make it ascend.

I am the essential Feminine.

In the beginning I was no more than a mist, rising and falling: I lay hidden beneath affinities that were as yet hardly conscious, beneath a loose and tenuous polarity.

And yet I was already in existence.

In the stirring of the layers of the cosmic substance, whose nascent folds contain the promise of worlds beyond number, the first traces of my countenance could be read.

Like a soul, still dormant but essential, I bestirred the original mass, almost without form, which hastened into my field of attractions; and I instilled even into the atoms, into the fathomless depth of the infinitesimal, a vague but obstinate yearning to emerge from the solitude of their nothingness and to hold fast to something outside themselves.

I was the bond that thus held together the foundations of the universe.

For every monad, be it never so humble, provided it is in very truth a center of activity, obeys in its movement an embryo of love for me:

The universal Feminine.” 

All: Alleluia, alleluia, she leads us Alleluia

Reader: Gospel: Matthew 16: 13-20

In today’s Gospel Jesus asks his disciples who do people say that I am? When asked the disciples “who do you say I am,” Peter responds with the correct answer and is rewarded. Isn’t Jesus asking us the same question; Who do you say I am?

Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi and asked his disciples,

"Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" 

They replied, "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." 

He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter said in reply,

"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." 

Jesus said to him in reply, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. 

For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. 

And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church,

and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. 

I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.  Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." 

Then he strictly ordered his disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.

Reader: This is the sacred word according to Matthew

All: Thanks be to God.

SHARED HOMILY: starter questions: Steve:

• What is this Feminine energy Hildegard and Teilhard are talking about?

• Do you see this energy manifested in the world today? And how, where?

• How did Hildegard answer the question “Who do you say I am?”

• How do you answer that question?

What do we bring to the table. What do you want to pray for?

Share a Gesture of Peace:

Steve: It is a gentle peace, it is a loving and compassionate peace. Let us share a gesture of peace with your neighbors.

OFFERING SONG: Christ Be Our Light Bernadette Farrell https://youtu.be/UqH8GBzjSUc

PASS THE COLLECTION BASKET:

The Liturgy of the Eucharist: Our Thanksgiving Celebration

Sursum Corda: Hearts Up! https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KhbBD6_R39Y?feature=share

In English: The Lord be with You. And also with you. Hearts Up! We lift our hearts to the Lord. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. It is right to give God thanks and praise.

EUCHARISTIC PRAYER: Steve

In the spirit of Hildegard of Bingen, we call upon Divine Wisdom and Lady Love to guide us toward you O Christ. Help us to say yes like Peter, “you are the Christ, the Living God.” May this mysterious Spirit bring back harmony, peace, and a greening spirit back into the world. May all things, all creatures, and all of humankind be moved to greater union, more collaboration and less competition. 

May your unending love ignite in us a love of gentle kindness and compassion. May we remember you in this Eucharistic meal and be co-creators for a more loving world.

On the night before he died, Jesus took bread; he gave it thanks, he broke it, and gave it to his friends, saying,

All: ’This is my body, which is given for you. Do this to remember me.’

Pat: In the same way after supper, he took the cup of wine; he gave it thanks and said,’This is the cup of the new and eternal covenant; take and drink.

All: ‘Do this in memory of me.’

All Sing: We Remember How You Loved Us     Marty Haugen

https://youtu.be/D6_KModMCtg

Pat:  Let Us Proclaim the Mystery of Our Faith:

All: Dying you destroyed illusion

Rising you restored our union

Maranatha, come Lord Jesus

Alpha and Omega.

Through Christ and with Christ, and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor are yours almighty Creator forever and ever. Amen

Pat:  Now together, as one community, we offer to you O Creator,

our prayer, received from our brother Jesus:

 

All:  Our Mother, Our Father, holy and blessed is your true name.

We pray for your reign of peace to come. We pray that your good will be done.

Let heaven and earth become one. Give us this day the bread we need, give it to those who have none.

Let forgiveness flow like a river between us, from each one. Lead us to holy innocence beyond innocence beyond the trials of our days.

Come swiftly Mother, Father, come. For yours is the power and the glory and the mercy: Forever your Name is All in One.

Amen

Invitation to our Thanksgiving meal: The Eucharist: 

Pat: So through this Eucharist, and in the spirit of our Beloved Community, we extend the invitation of Jesus to each and everyone of you to take and eat this bread, and drink from this cup. Let us come to this table, this is the table of the Risen Christ, where all are welcome.

COMMUNION SONG:  O Strength of Wisdom (O Virtue Sapentiae) Hildegard von Bingen https://youtu.be/ExJT1sRYmIA

CLOSING PRAYER:

Deep peace of the running wave to you,

of water flowing, rising and falling,

sometimes advancing, sometimes receding.

May the stream of your life flow unimpeded:

Deep peace of the running wave to you.

Deep peace of the flowing air to you,

which fans your face on a sultry day,

the air that you breathe deeply, rhythmically,

which imparts to you energy, consciousness, life.

Deep peace of the flowing air to you.

Deep peace of the quiet earth to you,

who herself unmoving, harbors the movements

and facilitates the life of ten thousand creatures,

while resting contented, stable, tranquil.

Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.

Deep peace of the shining stars to you,

which stay invisible til darkness falls,

and discloses their pure and shining presence

beaming down in compassion on our turning world.

Deep peace of the shining stars to you.

Deep peace of the watching shepherds to you,

of unpretentious folk who, watching and waiting,

spend long hours out on the hillside, 

expecting in simplicity some Coming of the Lord.

Deep peace of the watching shepherds to you.

Deep peace of the Son of Peace to you,

who, swift as the wave and pervasive as the air,

quiet as the earth and shining as a star,

breathes into un His Peace and His Spirit.

Deep peace of the Son of Peace to you. - Mary Rogers

All:  AND THE PEOPLE OF THIS BELOVED EMMAUS COMMUNITY SAY—AMEN

CLOSING SONG: Lift Up Your Hearts to the Lord St. Louis Jesuits  Roc O’Connor

https://youtu.be/NmlcRwxduyI

ANNOUNCEMENTS: