Control My Need to Argue with Virtue of Harmony

The Face Of Discord

St. Hildegard sees Discord hanging upside down in darkness, feet lifted above her, a leopard’s head on a scorpion’s body—her whole form already inverted before she says a single word. She has turned her back on the South and the East, refusing the very directions the man in the vision has faced throughout this entire Part. Harmony, who St. Hildegard calls Concordia in Latin, true to the pattern of every virtue across all thirty-five weeks, receives no physical image at all—she is voice only, needing no body to answer a vice whose entire nature is to have everything, even her own body, upside down.

From Desire To Discord: When Grasping Becomes Total Inversion

Every vice before her in this chain still wanted something—earthly things, honor, rings, a little more comfort. Discord doesn’t want a thing. She wants the order of things reversed entirely—“the noble to the ignoble, the rich to the poor… like a wheel.” That’s the real escalation Part 4 has been building toward: seven vices that each grabbed at one piece of the world, and an eighth that simply flips the whole world over. A soul that has spent this long grasping at pieces eventually stops caring what it holds at all—it just wants nothing to stay where God put it. Discord is desire with no object left except disorder itself.

Reflection:

Have you ever encountered someone who wanted to argue with you about the faith, or some situation, or a belief that you hold to be true? What do we do when we are faced with discord, either in relationships with others, or worse, within our own minds?

The virtue of harmony—Concord, as she is called by St. Hildegard—is our supernatural defense against these confusing whirlwinds of doubt and sadness. As we have journeyed over the past several months we have been introduced to almost all of St. Hildegard’s virtues, and they have been presented to us in a certain order. This is because some virtues lay a foundation for later ones; they build upon each other. It is a grand, interconnected harmony.

Humility teaches us our station in life and how to relate to God and others, with obedience and loyalty. It helps us grow in charity toward God and our brothers and sisters in Christ, as well as those who are in opposition to us. Peace helps us focus on the tranquility of order. It is a work of justice. We gain peace the more we can imitate Christ and be filled by him. These virtues help us act with harmony when we are faced with neighbors who do not think like us and who want to attack our beliefs and what we hold to be true.

We want to always put Christ first, and as the head of our Church he is our model. Jesus modeled harmony throughout the Gospels. He showed us in both word and deed. We see his love for the poor, for the outsider, for the sinner, the marginalized, and those who society shunned. We see how he taught his disciples to wash the feet of the people they served. Jesus also showed love to the soldier who came to arrest him by healing his ear after a disciple impulsively cut it off. 

Harmony.

If we understand how deeply God loves us then we can see how much he wants our conversion. He wants it so badly that he wills to bring us to him with a gentle and constant flow of grace. Most of us are unaware of this constant presence. The deeper we fall into sin the darker our intellects become, so much so that we fail to see what is right before our eyes. We argue and justify and entertain all sorts of errant thoughts about truth and justice and the way of life that is best. 

But in an instant, when we are open to grace, Jesus just comes and gives us a gift from the Holy Spirit and all that disquietude washes away, replaced by harmony. We can be at peace even when we do not know the future, or the outcome of our efforts regarding a thing we are working hard at. This is because when we have harmony with God and with our brothers and sisters, we are at peace regardless of the situation we find ourselves in. 

It’s all about our capacity to love, after all. When we allow Christ to expand that capacity, He tunes the discordant strings of our hearts to match His own. Our lives cease to be a series of defensive arguments and instead become a living symphony—a beautiful echo of the Trinity’s eternal harmony.

Going Further:

Contemplate Romans chapter 12 if you’d like to meditate further on the virtue of harmony this week in your daily prayer. Verses 9-21 talk about having mutual love for one another and ways to respond to disquietude and discord. You may want to journal with the Lord about what touched your heart. If you do this, be sure to give the Lord time to respond to you by listening in silence. 

Quieting the Whirlwinds of Discord:

Take a moment to pause, drop your defensive armor, and settle into the absolute stillness of this adoration chapel. The desperate need to argue and be right is a quiet, dangerous trap of pride—an exhausting habit of bickering that invites inner restlessness (disquietudo) and fractures our peace. 

“Alas for me, a pilgrim! How can I survive among these dangers?… The whirlwinds tell me lies in many voices, which rise up within me, saying, ‘Who are you? and what are you doing? and what are these battles you are fighting? You are indeed unhappy, for you do not know whether your work is good or bad’… Ach! How unhappy is this struggle, which forces me from labor to labor, from sorrow to sorrow, from discord to discord, depriving me of all happiness.”

St. Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, Book 1, Vision 4, Para. 5, Trans. Hart/Bishop, Abridged

When we let the devil’s subtle whirlwinds of doubt and sadness stir up discord within our minds, we rupture our connection to the melody of heaven. Before we open the Word of God, let us offer up a sincere prayer of petition—asking for the profound humility to surrender our need for conflict and step into Christ’s perfect tranquility.