June 24, 2025 • 38 mins
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St. Hildegard of Bingen—one of only four women Doctors of the Church—and her revolutionary approach to healing that seamlessly unites body and soul.
Leila Lawler joins Jack to discuss St. Hildegard's comprehensive system of natural medicine. Unlike today's healthcare model that treats the body as a flawed machine needing constant pharmaceutical intervention, Hildegard recognized our inherent capacity for self-healing when properly supported through God's natural design.
As trust in institutional medicine wavers, many are rediscovering what Hildegard knew centuries ago: that herbs, proper nutrition, rest, and spiritual balance work together to maintain health.
St. Hildegard’s Garden
Recipes and Remedies for Healing Body and Soul
Jacks Latest Blog Young Men United in the Eucharist: Heroically Rebuilding the Three Necessary Societies
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So every once in a while, on a fairly regular basis
, I'll do 72 to 90 hour fast andit's amazing how your body just
eats up all of these freeradicals and all these different
things and you realize yourbody's amazing.
You just got to put the rightthings into your body and let it
go to work.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
For her it was all a matter of balancing and she also
believed, and I think thatyounger people are more open to
this, maybe, than people in mygeneration who are just more
used to kind of experts tellingus what to do, but the idea that
God in his creation hasprovided and that in the world,
(00:39):
on the earth, he has provided uswith what we need to be healthy
.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
When these young people are coming, Lila, into
the church, we have to make aconnection with them into this
whole vision.
In other words, here I am withmy own experiences in my own
life, and then here's the church, right, and they're trying to
figure out how these cometogether, which you just said is
so important.
You mentioned she was a mystic,she was analytical and yet she
(01:05):
was very practical.
And she studied sciences andearths, and herbs, and all these
things, and so this is thebeauty of our faith, isn't it
you?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
want a child.
Well, if you give us money,we'll get you a child.
No, god has a plan and apurpose.
The closer we stick to hisplans and his purposes, the
better off we'll be.
And I am afraid that we areheading towards having I mean,
we're already not a healthysociety like.
Physically we're not healthy,certainly mentally and
spiritually we're not, and I'mreally afraid that we're just
(01:35):
going to have another generationwhere that even the babies
don't have the veriditas as StHildegard would call it.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, a
production of the John Paul IIRenewal Center.
I'm Jack Riggert, your host.
Today.
We're going to do something alittle different.
As most of you know, I was aprofessional chef for many, many
years.
I still love to cook, andespecially love to cook healthy.
And not only that.
We've learned through the yearshere, especially the last five
or 10 years, that our food andmedical institutions are not
(02:20):
doing.
They don't have our bestinterests in mind let's just put
it that way and it's veryimportant for each of us to
start to take care of our ownhealth.
With that in mind, we're goingto be talking about St
Hildegard's Garden Recipes andRemedies for Healing Body and
Soul.
You're going to meet a doctorof the church.
There's only four women doctorsof the church and she's one of
(02:41):
them it's very exciting actuallywhose wisdom on health and
nutrition will aid you ineverything from better digestion
and sleep to improve mood,memory and pain relief.
So here with me today is LilaMarie Lawler.
She's a wife, mother of seven,grandmother of many.
She lives in centralMassachusetts.
(03:01):
She encountered Christianity inhigh school, entered the
Catholic Church in 1979, theyear she was married to Philip
Lawler, noted Catholic authorand editor of Catholic World
News.
I'll give you a couple moretidbits about Lila.
She practices kitchen sinkphilosophy on her website.
Like Mother, like Daughter, Ipoked around there a little bit.
(03:21):
It's really good.
She writes on everything fromcooking, education and
recovering what she and herdaughters call the collective
memory.
We'll have to hear what that'sabout Her book, the Little
Oratory, which she wrote withDavid Clayton, a Beginner's
Guide to Praying in the Home.
Dr Scott Hahn said some nicethings about it.
He said it's one of the mostbeautiful books he's ever seen.
It's inspiring yet practical,realistic yet revolutionary.
(03:44):
If one book has the potentialto transform the Catholic family
and society.
This is it.
That's a big deal coming fromScott Hahn.
It's amazing.
And, lila, before I bring youon, we have a lot of young
people joining us now Behind meis a sword, that's a Claymore
sword.
We have an apostolate withinour apostolate Claymore Miletus
(04:05):
Christi, soldiers for Christ,for all these young men
especially, and all the peoplethat love them, and they're
stepping up and they want toknow more and more and more.
Let me just mention one or twoother quick books here Her book
God has no Children, and thereason I want to bring this up.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
No Grandchildren, no Grandchildren no.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Grandchildren Thank and the reason I want to bring
this up— no grandchildren, nograndchildren.
Thank you for that.
A guided reading of Pope PiusXI's encyclical Casti Canubi on
Marriage.
And when you read that document, which I read parts of it not
too long ago, it's stillimportant.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
In fact, it's incredibly important, maybe one
of the most complete explicationof the church's teaching on
marriage.
It is still the most complete,and so what I did was I did a
guided reading of it, because itis a little tricky to read,
(04:59):
yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Yeah, well, thank you for that.
So, with all that said, look,it's a pleasure to have you on.
I'll just tell our audiencethat you were a little late
getting on, so we're taking ourbreath here a little bit, and I
did a long intro so Lila couldrelax a minute or two.
It's crazy how our world gets,but Lila, it's great to be with
you.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
So tell us this With all the books that you've
written, all the articles, allthe blogs, we're actually going
to be talking about a book thatyou did not write.
It's published by Sophia Pressand I do a lot of things with
Sophia Press myself, so tell ushow you got involved in this.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Right.
So this book actually is writtenby Paul Ferris and he is a
Frenchman.
It was written in French, itwas published in Italy and they
translated Sophia translated forour audience and they asked me
to write the foreword.
And you know, that was soobviously very flattering and
also just exciting and a littlebit I was also a little cautious
(06:00):
, because Saint-Hildegard isoften misunderstood, so I was
careful.
I was kind of like, well, whatare you?
What is this book about?
What are you going to say?
And actually they sent me thetext of it, they sent me the
French version, and I was kindof like, okay, well, do you, do
you have a translation so I canlook at it.
And they're like, no, not yet.
And I said, okay, fine, I'llread it in French.
(06:20):
So I did read it in French,which takes me a little longer,
but I did it.
And then and I said, yes, thisis good, I, I'm excited about
this.
So I wrote the foreword and youknow they asked me I mean, I
gather that Mr Ferris doesn'tspeak English and would be in a
different- very different timezone and you know so I think,
(06:40):
yeah, they just basically werelike would you go and talk about
it?
So that's what I'm doing.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Yeah Well, it's a pleasure to have you on, because
I've met your husband, philLawler, at a friend's house and
out in the suburbs of Chicago atone time, but I never met you,
so it is a pleasure, and pleasetell Phil that Jack Riggard with
the John Paul Tour RenewalCenter said to say hello.
So tell us a little bit aboutthis book.
What got you excited?
I'm actually.
I didn't get a chance to gothrough everything in the book
(07:11):
but, like I said, I'm aprofessional chef.
My parents were bothprofessional chefs, my
grandparents were professionalchefs.
And so I stepped away from itabout 25 years ago.
But I still love to cook, andespecially when you start to
talk about medicinal herbs anddifferent ways to heal your body
, I mean it's very importantstuff today.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yes, the interest in herbal medicine has risen and
you know you alluded to ourexperience, especially in the
last five years, where we Ithink a lot of us did kind of
say, well, hold on, wait, whatis it that?
Do they have our best interestsat heart?
Why?
And it's so interesting becauseI actually got stopped on the
(07:53):
street a couple of years agowhere we were in Maine, and this
lady who had met me at a talksomewhere, she said, I think I
know you, you're not going toremember me but then right away
got into a conversation abouthow she never really had
questioned things that,especially about her children,
but that during the lockdowntime she, like the rest of us,
(08:17):
had time to look things up andquestion and investigate more.
And she said, you know, hertrust was really shaken and I
think that that is true for manypeople.
And it's very interestingbecause the herbal remedies are
very old and they're reallybeing rediscovered.
(08:38):
It's not like, oh, here's somerandom things, it's actually not
only ancient remedies that dowork and even a lot of them have
had scientific studies done onthem and it has been affirmed
that, you know, in trials, intests, as opposed to like the
clinical world of just how youtreat your family, whatever that
(08:59):
they do have an effect, butalso that the pharmaceutical
industry itself uses a lot ofthe compounds that are in the
herbs.
A lot of what they are doing intheir medications does derive
from the herbs.
However, what it is is anindustrialized version and then
(09:22):
very often compounds that areextracted and taken into, given
in a form that maybe is not inits context.
So a lot of times with theherbs that are effective, it's
because they're effective withinthe whole plant.
And so just getting theknowledge of foraging them
yourself or knowing, if you'rebuying them, where they come
(09:45):
from, versus a synthetic analog,that's you know some company
and maybe even there's even been.
You know, when we are orderingsupplements, there have been
some concerning reports thatthose supplements are coming
from abroad and that we may noteven know whether they are what
the label says.
So yeah, for me it was funnybecause basically I think it was
(10:08):
midway through lockdown I saidyou know what?
I have herbs, culinary herbs inmy garden and I really want to
have a medicinal herb garden too.
So I started ordering seeds andI started looking things up and
, yeah, I kind of went down thatrabbit hole.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yes, yes, it's important.
You know, the more I learnabout the human body, you know,
look, I got into John Paul'swork and he brings me in this
theology of the body, and themore you study the actual body
itself, the more miraculous itis.
Every once in a while, on afairly regular basis, I'll do 72
(10:44):
to 90 hour fasts and it'samazing how your body just eats
up all of these free radicalsand all these different things
and you realize your body isamazing.
You just got to put the rightthings into your body and let it
go to work For sure.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
So St Hildegard.
So she's a 12th century saint.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yeah, tell us about her a little bit.
Yeah, it's fascinating.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
It century saint.
Yeah, tell us about her alittle bit.
It's fascinating.
It is so fascinating and, yeah,it became interesting in her
back in 2012 when Pope Benedictcanonized her and then made her
doctor of the church.
And that was so fascinating too, because to think that there
was this ancient saint but shewasn't canonizedized that was so
interesting yeah, it isinteresting what took.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
So do we know what took so long?
Speaker 2 (11:28):
no, I don't know.
And then I think it's becausethere are saints I mean, this is
my, I don't really, I haven'treally investigated but I think
it's because there are saintswho everybody just accepts as
saints and you know, thecanonization process is like the
official word this is a saint,but there are many saints who
are revered.
But to make her a doctor, thoughI know so then he was like
(11:49):
she's a doctor of the church andI remember kind of thinking
okay, well, what's going on here?
Is it a kind of a sop to women?
You know the DEI of like thispantheon or whatever.
So I was a little skeptical.
But then when I read what hehad to say, then I started
looking into her and I was likeno, she's the real deal.
(12:10):
Hildegard is by far one of themost stratospheric minds.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
A person of very great energy and intensity.
She entered the monastery, orshe went to live at the
monastery, when she was veryyoung, because her parents took
her as a child.
She had intense visions thatalmost killed her, like she was
so, so in tune with the mysticalworld, but at the same time her
(12:37):
mind is extremely analyticalworld, but at the same time her
mind is extremely analytical.
So then she became, eventuallybecame abbess, and I like to say
that you know, she basicallygrew up as a Benedictine.
It was that way of life, thatspirituality permeates her whole
being.
She was the person who, as theabbess, was responsible for not
(12:58):
only the nuns, over whom she hadauthority, but for the whole
community.
She was so interested andinteresting that she wrote
letters and corresponded withthe great figures of her time
popes, emperors, cardinals, allsorts of people and so she had
(13:20):
her pulse on everything.
She was a theologian, aphilosopher and a healer, and
the the thing about the medievalapproach is it is a very
holistic approach, as theancient view in many different
cultures and that's so important, what you just said, because
(13:41):
because when these young peopleare coming, lila, into the
church, we have to make aconnection with them into this
whole vision.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
In other words, here I am with my own experiences in
my own life, and then here's thechurch, right, and they're
trying to figure out how thesecome together, which you just
said is so important.
You mentioned she was a mystic,she was analytical and yet she
was very practical and shestudied sciences and earths and
(14:09):
herbs and all of these things,and so this is the beauty of our
faith, isn't it?
And I'm speaking to these youngpeople again, lila, as they're
coming in you know, the beautyis that it's about everything.
It's about what we touch, whatwe feel, what we taste and also
know that these are tiny littletastes that God gives us of this
big taste, right, as we startto go deeper and deeper into our
faith.
So everything you said there isso important.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
So that's really the medieval image is of a
hierarchical construction of thecosmos, and that every level of
the hierarchy of being isreflecting the one below and
above.
The ones below reflect the oneabove, and so the human body
also is a microcosm of this, andso it has to be in balance.
(14:51):
And she systematized it's notthat she invented things, but
she systematized what she knew,what she had observed and what
she had been handed.
And she had a whole approachthat you know was so interesting
because it really was aboutobservation, so looking at the
person, trying to getinformation from what you are
(15:15):
observing.
And she had a particular wordthat she coined, I think, to
express what this living forcereally is in its connection with
the whole cosmos, and shecalled it veriditas.
And her whole healing system isbased on veriditas, latin.
(15:36):
You know that at the root ofthat is the idea of a green
living source that either youknow you have a good amount of
or it's failing in you.
And you know when she takesinto account, like how the
patient is looking, the sunshine, the rest, the warmth, the
coolness, so she had thatbalance between warmth and chill
(15:58):
, and then the humors, and sofor her it was all a matter of
balancing and she also believed,and I think that younger people
are more open to this and maybethan people in my generation
who are just more used to kindof experts telling us what to do
, but the idea that God in hiscreation has provided and that
(16:22):
in the world, on the earth, hehas provided us with what we
need to be healthy.
And the plants are there and shestudied them and she used them.
And again, this is allknowledge.
That was there, it was handeddown, it's things that that
people in different cultures,whether Chinese or what have you
know, but she put it in thecontext they knew a lot, and she
(16:46):
put it in the context of thefaith.
And that is what's so importantto me, because today I think
that because we as modernistswe've kind of separated
ourselves from the natural world, I think that the New Age kind
of forces have co-opted thenatural world and we need to
(17:10):
reclaim it, because the naturalworld is created by God and God
has a purpose and that purposeis exhibited in this
hierarchical view of nature.
It's not binary, it's got apattern and an order.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Yes, it's amazing.
And getting back to somethingyou just said earlier, when you
kind of laughed a little bitabout, you're probably a baby
boomer, right, are you a babyboomer?
Speaker 2 (17:34):
At the end.
Yeah, I'm at the tail end.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Yeah, I guess I'm a little bit more than at the tail
end, but I have brothers thatare younger than me that are at
the tail end and and anyway, Ihave more gray hair than you do.
It's just.
It's just a light.
I'll turn a little sideways andI haven't come in.
But, here it is Lila, so sowhat I'm when I'm speaking to
young people, you know.
(17:56):
You mentioned maybe we justfollowed the experts, right,
because we trusted.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
We trusted yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
What happened since COVID it was happening before
that, but certainly since COVIDis that these young people are
looking around and realizingthat the experts don't know
everything.
And in fact, many of theexperts and I'll just be
perfectly blunt they lied tothem.
And when you hear that and youwonder, okay, I'm being lied to,
they told me you know, to lookat this.
And now I'm addicted topornography, to drink this, and
(18:23):
now I did, you know, blah, blah,blah, blah, blah.
And how do I get out of this?
Well, they're sensing somethingwrong, and that's the beauty of
what you just said.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Especially because the main thing that they have
now, the main paradigm that weare given in the health world,
is that it's a paradigm of amachine and the idea is that the
machine is fundamentally flawedand that it needs to have these
(18:53):
periodic you know, and I mean Idon't know like injections,
that you know like you have tohave your fluids replaced or
something.
Yeah, and we're even worse acomputer.
And so the idea that you lookat a healthy baby and you say
for this baby to survive, weneed to give it 72 injections.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
There's something there where.
So I feel like if St Hildegardwere there and looking, she
would say well, it's true thathuman nature is flawed from the
fall.
At the same time, our bodieswe're given an intellect and
we're given a body, and ourbodies actually have the ability
(19:37):
to heal themselves.
And you know, my son-in-law isa surgeon and he says that one
thing you learn in surgery, inpracticing surgery, is that one
third of the time the surgeon isreally helping and one third of
the time the body is healingitself.
And the surgeon is kind ofmaybe even when he's helping,
(19:58):
he's kind of just trying to getthe body to heal itself, and one
third of the time he's actuallyharming.
And I wish that more doctorssettled that humility, because
the human body will repairitself.
But it has to be brought intobalance.
And that's where her vision andher understanding really comes
in, maybe to help us overcomethis other image we have, which
(20:22):
is not a good image, that we'rejust a machine that breaks down
and somehow we need expensivepharmaceuticals to keep us going
.
That does not seem right to me?
Speaker 1 (20:34):
No, and you know the sad thing and what we found out
my youngest daughter is a doctorand what you find out is they
spent so much time just learningto use some type of a pill
right to fix everything.
So I'm going to ask Lila, youknow how do you feel today.
Okay, I got a pill, I got aprescription for you, do they
(20:54):
ask?
Speaker 2 (20:54):
you if you have had rest.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Do they ask you how?
Speaker 2 (20:57):
much you go outside.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Or how do you eat?
Yes, right, and do they?
Speaker 2 (21:01):
sit and look at you.
Do they look at you and say howdoes she appear?
What is her viriditas Like?
This is not something that isnormal in our healthcare system
and it needs to be.
And the thing is that weespecially need to get away from
(21:21):
this idea of that if we'rehealthy, we need injections,
because that's not how it works.
Sure, if you're sick or if youhave broken a bone or something,
then yes, you need intervention.
Then we have to ask what thequality of that intervention is.
But if it's just that we'rehealthy, well then it comes down
to yeah, what are you eating?
(21:43):
Are you going outside andgetting sunshine?
Those are the important thingsthat we have to do for each
other.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Yes, yes, yes, you know I'm going to stretch this
just a little bit again forthese young people coming in,
kosti Kanubi, that we justmentioned earlier.
We work a lot with NFP theologyof the body, talk about IVF,
and so it's the same thing.
I had Dr Hildreth on from thePaul VI Institute and when you
use something like IVF, younever go to your point
(22:11):
underneath and find out what'sreally affecting a woman's body,
right?
What is her health?
All we do is we want tomanufacture a solution, and I
don't want to go too deep there,but I just want to say even
that, right, I know people thatare coming into and looking at
NFP just to get rid of thesechemicals and stuff affecting
their bodies.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Sure, and even, let's take even a step further back.
Besides just that, ivf doesn'taddress the problems of
infertility at all.
What about saying how can it begood for a child to be
conceived outside of itsmother's womb?
So right there, right there, wehave to say our humanity, not
(22:54):
to mention the divine end thatwe are supposed to be aiming for
, demands that we follow God'splan.
And God's plan is that thechild be conceived in its
mother's womb.
We can know some things aboutthat process.
We will never know all thethings that he has intended for
(23:18):
that process.
And when you start tinkeringlisten, even if we were talking
about a machine when you startjust willy nilly tinkering with
that machine, you are going tobreak it, and in ways that you
might not know until way later.
Like, oh wow, I was drivingdown the highway at 75 miles an
hour and I realized what thatscrew was for.
And this is with the, with thechild.
(23:40):
It's like we can't look at achild and say this is a kind of
machine and we can manipulate itand oh, you want a child?
Well, if you give us money,we'll get you a child.
No, god has a plan and a purpose.
The closer we stick to hisplans and his purposes, the
better off we'll be.
And I am afraid that we areheading towards having I mean,
(24:01):
we're already not a healthysociety like physically we're
not healthy, certainly, mentallyand spiritually we're not, and
I'm really afraid that we'rejust going to have another
generation where that, that eventhe babies don't have the
veriditas as St Hildegard wouldcall it to.
Isn't that the least that wecould hope for is like, oh,
(24:22):
we're just giving a baby anormal life, like just normal
health, and sure, like therewill be ups and downs and that's
what the you know people whoare called to be doctors they
should be focused on.
Oh, if there's something reallywrong, we will help you.
But the idea of we're going tonow manipulate things against
God's plan.
(24:43):
I think one of the mostfundamental things that we can
know about human nature is thatGod's plan is that the child be
within its mother's womb fromthat conception.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Yeah, and the reason and how does this fit together?
Okay, it sounds like we wentoff on a couple of tangents, but
we didn't, and the reason Iwanted to bring and thank you
for that the reason I wanted tobring this in is that when
somebody is new coming into thechurch, what I've learned and
what you're expressing rightthere is that that you know
you're finding out.
All these human experts don'talways know as much as they
(25:16):
think they know and so if I'mnew coming into the church, I am
going to trust.
Now I mean, this is the idea Ihave to trust some higher
authority.
And when we walk into thechurch, what I always tell young
people look at it and tell you,spent a little more time in the
church and figure things out.
Just trust her.
Try trusting her, because yourlife you're in the church,
(25:36):
because you're tired of what'sgoing on behind you and in your
own experience.
So now you step into the churchand so this is the beauty and I
want to get back to the bookhere a little bit and St
Hildegard, but this is thebeauty of it Just trust, right,
because there's a lot of thingswe don't know about our own
bodies that we just talked about.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
And so the beauty of God's plan right.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
The point is the bottom line beauty of God's plan
.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Of his plan, of which he is quite the apostle, and in
the book.
So I think that you know thereare.
I mean, I myself personally ownseveral books that are more
like encyclopedias of herbs andtheir remedies and their uses
and so on.
This book isn't exactly that.
What it is is a beautiful bookthat looks lovely on the table.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Yes, it does.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
And it has my foreword, which speaks about how
to approach her.
Maybe because we have somepreconceptions in our modern
time, even about the fact thatshe's a woman, we might think of
her as some sort of rebel.
And she was not a rebel.
In fact, if you go I say in myforward if you go to like one of
the main websites, if you justtype in St Hildegard, you'll
(26:48):
come to a website that saysshe's like a pioneer of feminism
, which is ridiculous becausebecause actually she submitted
totally to the hierarchy of thechurch and some people claim
that because she preached, shewent out into the square, she
went out into the world andpreached about God and the
Trinity, about our Lord JesusChrist and about his blessed
(27:12):
mother.
And so they think like, oh,because she was a woman, this
made her some sort of rebelliousfigure, a pioneer of feminism,
but actually she preached at theinvitation of two popes.
So this whole paradigm of, likethe conflict between men and
women, she would laugh at thatand think that that was silly.
So that's the kind of thing Italk about in the forward.
(27:33):
And then there's theintroduction by Paul Ferris,
which is a biography of her,which is very interesting and
goes into some of theachievements that she had and
people say, oh well, theseachievements were unusual for a
woman.
Well, they were unusual foranyone.
She was a completely unusualperson there.
Really, I think there'sprobably only one or two men in
(27:56):
the whole history of the worldthat were like her.
So I don't it.
Just for me it's a meaninglesscategory.
And then there is a whole longsegment that has these beautiful
if I can hold it up and peoplecan see.
So these beautiful prints, whichI find actually very useful,
because sometimes a picture, aphotograph that you might look
(28:18):
up if you were looking somethingup on the internet and you see
a photograph, it actually isn'tas helpful in identifying the
herb as a print that shows youthe root, the way the flowers
look and the way the plant looksat different stages of its
development, the seeds and so on.
And then there are excerptsfrom her writings about the
(28:39):
particular plant.
Then there's another sectionthat's remedies.
So taking a lot of the plantsshe spoke about and saying what
they're good for, and those gobeyond what you might find if
you were just doing a search forthem online, because she has
again, she's looking at thewhole person, including their
(29:01):
spiritual outlook.
So she is often saying what theuse of the plant would be for
the spiritual state of theperson, as well as for their
health, which is we need that,and it's true.
So I'll give you just a quicknote.
It's so interesting becausewhen I was thinking about my
medicinal garden and I wasthinking about planting things
(29:23):
purposefully in my garden, Irealized, oh, actually, a lot of
these things are literallyweeds.
They're literally things that Ido not need to plant in my
garden, because they just growin the brush or what have you
down my lane and I can gatherthem at will and it's really not
a problem.
And one of those things isgoldenrod, which is something
that I use a lot in my remedies.
(29:44):
It's just an all-aroundwonderful herb that comes out in
the end of summer.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Isn't that something?
Speaker 2 (29:49):
And I will say, like just to this point of the
physical benefit of the herb andthe spiritual.
So goldenrod is very good foryour overall health, for urinary
health, for all sorts of thingsand allergies.
But I noticed I would dry itand put it in the jar and then
(30:10):
when I went to get it to make atea I would open the jar and I
would smell it and I would justhave such a sense of well-being.
The scent of the golden rodjust gives you a wonderful sense
of happiness and well-being andit's kind of like we need that.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
And I think that grows anywhere, doesn't it?
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yeah, it's all out there, I think I have it around
my house.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Yeah, absolutely, Now I can use it.
So, so when we're talking aboutthis book, we're talking about
it's actually going to talkabout St Hildegard herself
because, she's fascinating toyour point.
And again, when I'm thinkingabout these young people, I mean
it's amazing how much, the moreyou look into the church, the
more you see these gifts andthese people coming in as gifts.
And when you're talking about.
(30:55):
You know the church doesn't,you know, respect women or
whatever, and you see this, youknow her, St Catherine of Siena
they went around talking to,like you said to popes, to, you
know, wrote writing letters toeverybody.
It's amazing that they have.
God brings them into this, intothis beautiful story and and
and you know they're exemplary.
(31:16):
I mean it's amazing beauty thatthey bring to us.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Yes, for sure.
And if we can just kind of getover this idea that everything's
in conflict and instead andthis is the beauty of the
churches to see that we're meantto cooperate in that.
And that's the medieval mind.
The medieval mind is aboutcooperating both with other
people and with nature and thecosmos.
And so I mean she had theEmperor Barbarossa writing to
(31:43):
her and saying, could you giveme medical advice?
And there was no conflict there.
Yeah, I think that if we'relooking at the church and her
saints, we just find think of itas like pockets and corners of
like.
I had no idea there was thisperson and she's so wonderful.
(32:03):
Then the last section of thebook is recipes, actually.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Okay, I was going to ask you.
Thank you, I was going to.
I bet you I would have forgotabout the recipes, and that's
important to all of us right Now.
Let me ask you this, lila withthe recipes, do we have to grow
this stuff ourselves?
Or somebody like me can pickthe book and say I want to make
this.
Can I go out and buy thoseherbs?
Can I find them around?
Speaker 2 (32:27):
I mean some of them, some of them.
So, for instance, the one thatI want to try is honey-filled
iris rhizomes.
So I think people have irisesin their gardens and they
multiply and eventually you haveto divide them and you can pull
up some of those rhizomes whichare very close to the surface
and prepare them and mix themwith honey, and that would be a
(32:52):
remedy for frenzy, nervouscrises, excessive excitement,
tremors, palpitations, and thenthere are things Isn't that
something Like heartpalpitations?
Yes, Heart palpitations.
Yeah, isn't that something?
Yeah, and I mean, if you lookedso this is some-.
I haven't ever looked into,like, what heart medications are
(33:12):
, but I bet if you looked intoit you would find out that there
was some derivative of theseplants in those medications.
So, personally, I would rathergo to my garden than I know has
not been sprayed or anything.
Then there's a here's a recipechestnuts with sage butter.
Now, I don't make my own butter.
Maybe some of our listenershave a dairy cow.
(33:33):
That would be awesome.
I wish I had a dairy cow.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Or a friend with a dairy cow.
One or the other, yes, right.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
And actually.
And then it calls for chestnutswhich I suppose you would buy.
But actually I do havechestnuts on my lane.
They are Chinese chestnuts andsome years.
If the weather has been right,I can go collect them.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
And I love sage, I love sage.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
You said chestnuts and sage Sage is very easy to
grow and in my zone is zone 6A,and the sage comes back.
It is perennial.
So I definitely these thingsare easy to grow.
That's not a problem growingsage.
But you can buy it for sure.
You could go to the farmer'smarket and get the sage.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
So we're getting a lot in this book and again we
can buy it from where From?
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Sophia, that's the best place to get it.
Yep, sophia Institute Press.
You can get it wherever you getbooks.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
You know I just want to put a plug in for Sophia
Institute Press and I'll makesure again I have it in the show
notes.
Sometimes it's going to take alittle longer to get to you.
It even might cost you $1 or $2more sometimes, but it's worth
it and it may not.
It may not.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Their shipping is pretty fast.
I have to say.
They ship things really fast,they're great.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
So if you're feeling good today, not only about the
book but about these Catholicpublishers, and try to support
them, anyways, that's just allI'll say about that.
Because I love fast things andyou know whatever too.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
But in this case, haven't you found that Amazon
has gotten super slow?
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Well, let's say no, I haven't found it, but it
doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
It doesn't matter.
Maybe it's where I live.
They're really slow.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Today we have a special on Sophia Institute
Press and I love them and theydo some incredible work.
It's worth going there, lila,isn't it?
Just to explore the books?
And they can find your booksthere, too, can't they?
Yep, yeah, so well, guys, we'regoing to start to unwind here a
little bit.
I'm going to give you the lastword, but you're such a joy and
thank you for taking the time,and I think you know this book
has got so many things in it,but I think, just for young
(35:38):
people coming in and old people,all of us coming in, and
getting to know this doctor, thechurch fascinating person
bringing us some you know, justto read what she was doing and
these natural ways to live andtake care of your body and some
good recipes back there, youknow, I'm definitely going to
put this book to use myself.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
I hope so.
Yeah, yeah, I always say healthcare is 90% or more in nursing
care.
The people in the family, themother of the family needs to
know how to take care of herchildren.
The resources are all around us.
So the book, I think, is veryhelpful in that.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Yes, well, thank you so much.
Thanks for joining us today.
Goodbye everyone.
We're going to ask you to joinus by helping us get the word
out, so if you could make sureyou subscribe and then hit like,
no matter which platform you'reon, remember that the Become
who you Are podcast is on audioand any music or podcast app
(36:35):
we're up on Rumble YouTube.
You can find us on X.
When you do subscribe, hit thelike button.
A couple of things to share withpeople Love Ed, love Ed is just
such an important apostolate,so it's in within our apostolate
the John Paul II Renewal Center.
This helps parents give thetalk to their children to push
(36:58):
back on all these genderideologies and the porn culture
and give children the truth anddo it through their parents, and
we help them do that.
The other one is really takenoff too.
It's Claymore Miletus Christi,soldiers for Christ.
That's where you see the swordbehind me.
That's the big sword.
That's our logo for Claymore.
Miletus Christi, soldiers forChrist.
That's where you see the swordbehind me.
That's the big sword.
That's our logo for Claymore.
(37:19):
That's a Claymore sword.
And this is for young people,especially young men Gen Z, high
school, all the way through.
Let's call it until they're 30years old or so, they're
starting to really understandthat something nefarious, very
toxic, is going on in theculture, and so they're stepping
into the church and we'rediscipling them.
So we want to help get the wordout about those things and,
(37:42):
lastly, consider financiallysupporting us.
Everything's in the show notes.
Hey, god bless you.
Thanks again.
So every once in a while, on a fairly regular basis
, I'll do 72 to 90 hour fast andit's amazing how your body just
eats up all of these freeradicals and all these different
things and you realize yourbody's amazing.
You just got to put the rightthings into your body and let it
go to work.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
For her it was all a matter of balancing and she also
believed, and I think thatyounger people are more open to
this, maybe, than people in mygeneration who are just more
used to kind of experts tellingus what to do, but the idea that
God in his creation hasprovided and that in the world,
(00:39):
on the earth, he has provided uswith what we need to be healthy
.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
When these young people are coming, Lila, into
the church, we have to make aconnection with them into this
whole vision.
In other words, here I am withmy own experiences in my own
life, and then here's the church, right, and they're trying to
figure out how these cometogether, which you just said is
so important.
You mentioned she was a mystic,she was analytical and yet she
(01:05):
was very practical.
And she studied sciences andearths, and herbs, and all these
things, and so this is thebeauty of our faith, isn't it
you?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
want a child.
Well, if you give us money,we'll get you a child.
No, god has a plan and apurpose.
The closer we stick to hisplans and his purposes, the
better off we'll be.
And I am afraid that we areheading towards having I mean,
we're already not a healthysociety like.
Physically we're not healthy,certainly mentally and
spiritually we're not, and I'mreally afraid that we're just
(01:35):
going to have another generationwhere that even the babies
don't have the veriditas as StHildegard would call it.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, a
production of the John Paul IIRenewal Center.
I'm Jack Riggert, your host.
Today.
We're going to do something alittle different.
As most of you know, I was aprofessional chef for many, many
years.
I still love to cook, andespecially love to cook healthy.
And not only that.
We've learned through the yearshere, especially the last five
or 10 years, that our food andmedical institutions are not
(02:20):
doing.
They don't have our bestinterests in mind let's just put
it that way and it's veryimportant for each of us to
start to take care of our ownhealth.
With that in mind, we're goingto be talking about St
Hildegard's Garden Recipes andRemedies for Healing Body and
Soul.
You're going to meet a doctorof the church.
There's only four women doctorsof the church and she's one of
(02:41):
them it's very exciting actuallywhose wisdom on health and
nutrition will aid you ineverything from better digestion
and sleep to improve mood,memory and pain relief.
So here with me today is LilaMarie Lawler.
She's a wife, mother of seven,grandmother of many.
She lives in centralMassachusetts.
(03:01):
She encountered Christianity inhigh school, entered the
Catholic Church in 1979, theyear she was married to Philip
Lawler, noted Catholic authorand editor of Catholic World
News.
I'll give you a couple moretidbits about Lila.
She practices kitchen sinkphilosophy on her website.
Like Mother, like Daughter, Ipoked around there a little bit.
(03:21):
It's really good.
She writes on everything fromcooking, education and
recovering what she and herdaughters call the collective
memory.
We'll have to hear what that'sabout Her book, the Little
Oratory, which she wrote withDavid Clayton, a Beginner's
Guide to Praying in the Home.
Dr Scott Hahn said some nicethings about it.
He said it's one of the mostbeautiful books he's ever seen.
It's inspiring yet practical,realistic yet revolutionary.
(03:44):
If one book has the potentialto transform the Catholic family
and society.
This is it.
That's a big deal coming fromScott Hahn.
It's amazing.
And, lila, before I bring youon, we have a lot of young
people joining us now Behind meis a sword, that's a Claymore
sword.
We have an apostolate withinour apostolate Claymore Miletus
(04:05):
Christi, soldiers for Christ,for all these young men
especially, and all the peoplethat love them, and they're
stepping up and they want toknow more and more and more.
Let me just mention one or twoother quick books here Her book
God has no Children, and thereason I want to bring this up.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
No Grandchildren, no Grandchildren no.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Grandchildren Thank and the reason I want to bring
this up— no grandchildren, nograndchildren.
Thank you for that.
A guided reading of Pope PiusXI's encyclical Casti Canubi on
Marriage.
And when you read that document, which I read parts of it not
too long ago, it's stillimportant.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
In fact, it's incredibly important, maybe one
of the most complete explicationof the church's teaching on
marriage.
It is still the most complete,and so what I did was I did a
guided reading of it, because itis a little tricky to read,
(04:59):
yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Yeah, well, thank you for that.
So, with all that said, look,it's a pleasure to have you on.
I'll just tell our audiencethat you were a little late
getting on, so we're taking ourbreath here a little bit, and I
did a long intro so Lila couldrelax a minute or two.
It's crazy how our world gets,but Lila, it's great to be with
you.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
So tell us this With all the books that you've
written, all the articles, allthe blogs, we're actually going
to be talking about a book thatyou did not write.
It's published by Sophia Pressand I do a lot of things with
Sophia Press myself, so tell ushow you got involved in this.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Right.
So this book actually is writtenby Paul Ferris and he is a
Frenchman.
It was written in French, itwas published in Italy and they
translated Sophia translated forour audience and they asked me
to write the foreword.
And you know, that was soobviously very flattering and
also just exciting and a littlebit I was also a little cautious
(06:00):
, because Saint-Hildegard isoften misunderstood, so I was
careful.
I was kind of like, well, whatare you?
What is this book about?
What are you going to say?
And actually they sent me thetext of it, they sent me the
French version, and I was kindof like, okay, well, do you, do
you have a translation so I canlook at it.
And they're like, no, not yet.
And I said, okay, fine, I'llread it in French.
(06:20):
So I did read it in French,which takes me a little longer,
but I did it.
And then and I said, yes, thisis good, I, I'm excited about
this.
So I wrote the foreword and youknow they asked me I mean, I
gather that Mr Ferris doesn'tspeak English and would be in a
different- very different timezone and you know so I think,
(06:40):
yeah, they just basically werelike would you go and talk about
it?
So that's what I'm doing.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Yeah Well, it's a pleasure to have you on, because
I've met your husband, philLawler, at a friend's house and
out in the suburbs of Chicago atone time, but I never met you,
so it is a pleasure, and pleasetell Phil that Jack Riggard with
the John Paul Tour RenewalCenter said to say hello.
So tell us a little bit aboutthis book.
What got you excited?
I'm actually.
I didn't get a chance to gothrough everything in the book
(07:11):
but, like I said, I'm aprofessional chef.
My parents were bothprofessional chefs, my
grandparents were professionalchefs.
And so I stepped away from itabout 25 years ago.
But I still love to cook, andespecially when you start to
talk about medicinal herbs anddifferent ways to heal your body
, I mean it's very importantstuff today.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yes, the interest in herbal medicine has risen and
you know you alluded to ourexperience, especially in the
last five years, where we Ithink a lot of us did kind of
say, well, hold on, wait, whatis it that?
Do they have our best interestsat heart?
Why?
And it's so interesting becauseI actually got stopped on the
(07:53):
street a couple of years agowhere we were in Maine, and this
lady who had met me at a talksomewhere, she said, I think I
know you, you're not going toremember me but then right away
got into a conversation abouthow she never really had
questioned things that,especially about her children,
but that during the lockdowntime she, like the rest of us,
(08:17):
had time to look things up andquestion and investigate more.
And she said, you know, hertrust was really shaken and I
think that that is true for manypeople.
And it's very interestingbecause the herbal remedies are
very old and they're reallybeing rediscovered.
(08:38):
It's not like, oh, here's somerandom things, it's actually not
only ancient remedies that dowork and even a lot of them have
had scientific studies done onthem and it has been affirmed
that, you know, in trials, intests, as opposed to like the
clinical world of just how youtreat your family, whatever that
(08:59):
they do have an effect, butalso that the pharmaceutical
industry itself uses a lot ofthe compounds that are in the
herbs.
A lot of what they are doing intheir medications does derive
from the herbs.
However, what it is is anindustrialized version and then
(09:22):
very often compounds that areextracted and taken into, given
in a form that maybe is not inits context.
So a lot of times with theherbs that are effective, it's
because they're effective withinthe whole plant.
And so just getting theknowledge of foraging them
yourself or knowing, if you'rebuying them, where they come
(09:45):
from, versus a synthetic analog,that's you know some company
and maybe even there's even been.
You know, when we are orderingsupplements, there have been
some concerning reports thatthose supplements are coming
from abroad and that we may noteven know whether they are what
the label says.
So yeah, for me it was funnybecause basically I think it was
(10:08):
midway through lockdown I saidyou know what?
I have herbs, culinary herbs inmy garden and I really want to
have a medicinal herb garden too.
So I started ordering seeds andI started looking things up and
, yeah, I kind of went down thatrabbit hole.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yes, yes, it's important.
You know, the more I learnabout the human body, you know,
look, I got into John Paul'swork and he brings me in this
theology of the body, and themore you study the actual body
itself, the more miraculous itis.
Every once in a while, on afairly regular basis, I'll do 72
(10:44):
to 90 hour fasts and it'samazing how your body just eats
up all of these free radicalsand all these different things
and you realize your body isamazing.
You just got to put the rightthings into your body and let it
go to work For sure.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
So St Hildegard.
So she's a 12th century saint.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yeah, tell us about her a little bit.
Yeah, it's fascinating.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
It century saint.
Yeah, tell us about her alittle bit.
It's fascinating.
It is so fascinating and, yeah,it became interesting in her
back in 2012 when Pope Benedictcanonized her and then made her
doctor of the church.
And that was so fascinating too, because to think that there
was this ancient saint but shewasn't canonizedized that was so
interesting yeah, it isinteresting what took.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
So do we know what took so long?
Speaker 2 (11:28):
no, I don't know.
And then I think it's becausethere are saints I mean, this is
my, I don't really, I haven'treally investigated but I think
it's because there are saintswho everybody just accepts as
saints and you know, thecanonization process is like the
official word this is a saint,but there are many saints who
are revered.
But to make her a doctor, thoughI know so then he was like
(11:49):
she's a doctor of the church andI remember kind of thinking
okay, well, what's going on here?
Is it a kind of a sop to women?
You know the DEI of like thispantheon or whatever.
So I was a little skeptical.
But then when I read what hehad to say, then I started
looking into her and I was likeno, she's the real deal.
(12:10):
Hildegard is by far one of themost stratospheric minds.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
A person of very great energy and intensity.
She entered the monastery, orshe went to live at the
monastery, when she was veryyoung, because her parents took
her as a child.
She had intense visions thatalmost killed her, like she was
so, so in tune with the mysticalworld, but at the same time her
(12:37):
mind is extremely analyticalworld, but at the same time her
mind is extremely analytical.
So then she became, eventuallybecame abbess, and I like to say
that you know, she basicallygrew up as a Benedictine.
It was that way of life, thatspirituality permeates her whole
being.
She was the person who, as theabbess, was responsible for not
(12:58):
only the nuns, over whom she hadauthority, but for the whole
community.
She was so interested andinteresting that she wrote
letters and corresponded withthe great figures of her time
popes, emperors, cardinals, allsorts of people and so she had
(13:20):
her pulse on everything.
She was a theologian, aphilosopher and a healer, and
the the thing about the medievalapproach is it is a very
holistic approach, as theancient view in many different
cultures and that's so important, what you just said, because
(13:41):
because when these young peopleare coming, lila, into the
church, we have to make aconnection with them into this
whole vision.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
In other words, here I am with my own experiences in
my own life, and then here's thechurch, right, and they're
trying to figure out how thesecome together, which you just
said is so important.
You mentioned she was a mystic,she was analytical and yet she
was very practical and shestudied sciences and earths and
(14:09):
herbs and all of these things,and so this is the beauty of our
faith, isn't it?
And I'm speaking to these youngpeople again, lila, as they're
coming in you know, the beautyis that it's about everything.
It's about what we touch, whatwe feel, what we taste and also
know that these are tiny littletastes that God gives us of this
big taste, right, as we startto go deeper and deeper into our
faith.
So everything you said there isso important.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
So that's really the medieval image is of a
hierarchical construction of thecosmos, and that every level of
the hierarchy of being isreflecting the one below and
above.
The ones below reflect the oneabove, and so the human body
also is a microcosm of this, andso it has to be in balance.
(14:51):
And she systematized it's notthat she invented things, but
she systematized what she knew,what she had observed and what
she had been handed.
And she had a whole approachthat you know was so interesting
because it really was aboutobservation, so looking at the
person, trying to getinformation from what you are
(15:15):
observing.
And she had a particular wordthat she coined, I think, to
express what this living forcereally is in its connection with
the whole cosmos, and shecalled it veriditas.
And her whole healing system isbased on veriditas, latin.
(15:36):
You know that at the root ofthat is the idea of a green
living source that either youknow you have a good amount of
or it's failing in you.
And you know when she takesinto account, like how the
patient is looking, the sunshine, the rest, the warmth, the
coolness, so she had thatbalance between warmth and chill
(15:58):
, and then the humors, and sofor her it was all a matter of
balancing and she also believed,and I think that younger people
are more open to this and maybethan people in my generation
who are just more used to kindof experts telling us what to do
, but the idea that God in hiscreation has provided and that
(16:22):
in the world, on the earth, hehas provided us with what we
need to be healthy.
And the plants are there and shestudied them and she used them.
And again, this is allknowledge.
That was there, it was handeddown, it's things that that
people in different cultures,whether Chinese or what have you
know, but she put it in thecontext they knew a lot, and she
(16:46):
put it in the context of thefaith.
And that is what's so importantto me, because today I think
that because we as modernistswe've kind of separated
ourselves from the natural world, I think that the New Age kind
of forces have co-opted thenatural world and we need to
(17:10):
reclaim it, because the naturalworld is created by God and God
has a purpose and that purposeis exhibited in this
hierarchical view of nature.
It's not binary, it's got apattern and an order.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Yes, it's amazing.
And getting back to somethingyou just said earlier, when you
kind of laughed a little bitabout, you're probably a baby
boomer, right, are you a babyboomer?
Speaker 2 (17:34):
At the end.
Yeah, I'm at the tail end.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Yeah, I guess I'm a little bit more than at the tail
end, but I have brothers thatare younger than me that are at
the tail end and and anyway, Ihave more gray hair than you do.
It's just.
It's just a light.
I'll turn a little sideways andI haven't come in.
But, here it is Lila, so sowhat I'm when I'm speaking to
young people, you know.
(17:56):
You mentioned maybe we justfollowed the experts, right,
because we trusted.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
We trusted yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
What happened since COVID it was happening before
that, but certainly since COVIDis that these young people are
looking around and realizingthat the experts don't know
everything.
And in fact, many of theexperts and I'll just be
perfectly blunt they lied tothem.
And when you hear that and youwonder, okay, I'm being lied to,
they told me you know, to lookat this.
And now I'm addicted topornography, to drink this, and
(18:23):
now I did, you know, blah, blah,blah, blah, blah.
And how do I get out of this?
Well, they're sensing somethingwrong, and that's the beauty of
what you just said.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Especially because the main thing that they have
now, the main paradigm that weare given in the health world,
is that it's a paradigm of amachine and the idea is that the
machine is fundamentally flawedand that it needs to have these
(18:53):
periodic you know, and I mean Idon't know like injections,
that you know like you have tohave your fluids replaced or
something.
Yeah, and we're even worse acomputer.
And so the idea that you lookat a healthy baby and you say
for this baby to survive, weneed to give it 72 injections.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
There's something there where.
So I feel like if St Hildegardwere there and looking, she
would say well, it's true thathuman nature is flawed from the
fall.
At the same time, our bodieswe're given an intellect and
we're given a body, and ourbodies actually have the ability
(19:37):
to heal themselves.
And you know, my son-in-law isa surgeon and he says that one
thing you learn in surgery, inpracticing surgery, is that one
third of the time the surgeon isreally helping and one third of
the time the body is healingitself.
And the surgeon is kind ofmaybe even when he's helping,
(19:58):
he's kind of just trying to getthe body to heal itself, and one
third of the time he's actuallyharming.
And I wish that more doctorssettled that humility, because
the human body will repairitself.
But it has to be brought intobalance.
And that's where her vision andher understanding really comes
in, maybe to help us overcomethis other image we have, which
(20:22):
is not a good image, that we'rejust a machine that breaks down
and somehow we need expensivepharmaceuticals to keep us going
.
That does not seem right to me?
Speaker 1 (20:34):
No, and you know the sad thing and what we found out
my youngest daughter is a doctorand what you find out is they
spent so much time just learningto use some type of a pill
right to fix everything.
So I'm going to ask Lila, youknow how do you feel today.
Okay, I got a pill, I got aprescription for you, do they
(20:54):
ask?
Speaker 2 (20:54):
you if you have had rest.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Do they ask you how?
Speaker 2 (20:57):
much you go outside.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Or how do you eat?
Yes, right, and do they?
Speaker 2 (21:01):
sit and look at you.
Do they look at you and say howdoes she appear?
What is her viriditas Like?
This is not something that isnormal in our healthcare system
and it needs to be.
And the thing is that weespecially need to get away from
(21:21):
this idea of that if we'rehealthy, we need injections,
because that's not how it works.
Sure, if you're sick or if youhave broken a bone or something,
then yes, you need intervention.
Then we have to ask what thequality of that intervention is.
But if it's just that we'rehealthy, well then it comes down
to yeah, what are you eating?
(21:43):
Are you going outside andgetting sunshine?
Those are the important thingsthat we have to do for each
other.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Yes, yes, yes, you know I'm going to stretch this
just a little bit again forthese young people coming in,
kosti Kanubi, that we justmentioned earlier.
We work a lot with NFP theologyof the body, talk about IVF,
and so it's the same thing.
I had Dr Hildreth on from thePaul VI Institute and when you
use something like IVF, younever go to your point
(22:11):
underneath and find out what'sreally affecting a woman's body,
right?
What is her health?
All we do is we want tomanufacture a solution, and I
don't want to go too deep there,but I just want to say even
that, right, I know people thatare coming into and looking at
NFP just to get rid of thesechemicals and stuff affecting
their bodies.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Sure, and even, let's take even a step further back.
Besides just that, ivf doesn'taddress the problems of
infertility at all.
What about saying how can it begood for a child to be
conceived outside of itsmother's womb?
So right there, right there, wehave to say our humanity, not
(22:54):
to mention the divine end thatwe are supposed to be aiming for
, demands that we follow God'splan.
And God's plan is that thechild be conceived in its
mother's womb.
We can know some things aboutthat process.
We will never know all thethings that he has intended for
(23:18):
that process.
And when you start tinkeringlisten, even if we were talking
about a machine when you startjust willy nilly tinkering with
that machine, you are going tobreak it, and in ways that you
might not know until way later.
Like, oh wow, I was drivingdown the highway at 75 miles an
hour and I realized what thatscrew was for.
And this is with the, with thechild.
(23:40):
It's like we can't look at achild and say this is a kind of
machine and we can manipulate itand oh, you want a child?
Well, if you give us money,we'll get you a child.
No, god has a plan and a purpose.
The closer we stick to hisplans and his purposes, the
better off we'll be.
And I am afraid that we areheading towards having I mean,
(24:01):
we're already not a healthysociety like physically we're
not healthy, certainly, mentallyand spiritually we're not, and
I'm really afraid that we'rejust going to have another
generation where that, that eventhe babies don't have the
veriditas as St Hildegard wouldcall it to.
Isn't that the least that wecould hope for is like, oh,
(24:22):
we're just giving a baby anormal life, like just normal
health, and sure, like therewill be ups and downs and that's
what the you know people whoare called to be doctors they
should be focused on.
Oh, if there's something reallywrong, we will help you.
But the idea of we're going tonow manipulate things against
God's plan.
(24:43):
I think one of the mostfundamental things that we can
know about human nature is thatGod's plan is that the child be
within its mother's womb fromthat conception.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Yeah, and the reason and how does this fit together?
Okay, it sounds like we wentoff on a couple of tangents, but
we didn't, and the reason Iwanted to bring and thank you
for that the reason I wanted tobring this in is that when
somebody is new coming into thechurch, what I've learned and
what you're expressing rightthere is that that you know
you're finding out.
All these human experts don'talways know as much as they
(25:16):
think they know and so if I'mnew coming into the church, I am
going to trust.
Now I mean, this is the idea Ihave to trust some higher
authority.
And when we walk into thechurch, what I always tell young
people look at it and tell you,spent a little more time in the
church and figure things out.
Just trust her.
Try trusting her, because yourlife you're in the church,
(25:36):
because you're tired of what'sgoing on behind you and in your
own experience.
So now you step into the churchand so this is the beauty and I
want to get back to the bookhere a little bit and St
Hildegard, but this is thebeauty of it Just trust, right,
because there's a lot of thingswe don't know about our own
bodies that we just talked about.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
And so the beauty of God's plan right.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
The point is the bottom line beauty of God's plan
.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Of his plan, of which he is quite the apostle, and in
the book.
So I think that you know thereare.
I mean, I myself personally ownseveral books that are more
like encyclopedias of herbs andtheir remedies and their uses
and so on.
This book isn't exactly that.
What it is is a beautiful bookthat looks lovely on the table.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Yes, it does.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
And it has my foreword, which speaks about how
to approach her.
Maybe because we have somepreconceptions in our modern
time, even about the fact thatshe's a woman, we might think of
her as some sort of rebel.
And she was not a rebel.
In fact, if you go I say in myforward if you go to like one of
the main websites, if you justtype in St Hildegard, you'll
(26:48):
come to a website that saysshe's like a pioneer of feminism
, which is ridiculous becausebecause actually she submitted
totally to the hierarchy of thechurch and some people claim
that because she preached, shewent out into the square, she
went out into the world andpreached about God and the
Trinity, about our Lord JesusChrist and about his blessed
(27:12):
mother.
And so they think like, oh,because she was a woman, this
made her some sort of rebelliousfigure, a pioneer of feminism,
but actually she preached at theinvitation of two popes.
So this whole paradigm of, likethe conflict between men and
women, she would laugh at thatand think that that was silly.
So that's the kind of thing Italk about in the forward.
(27:33):
And then there's theintroduction by Paul Ferris,
which is a biography of her,which is very interesting and
goes into some of theachievements that she had and
people say, oh well, theseachievements were unusual for a
woman.
Well, they were unusual foranyone.
She was a completely unusualperson there.
Really, I think there'sprobably only one or two men in
(27:56):
the whole history of the worldthat were like her.
So I don't it.
Just for me it's a meaninglesscategory.
And then there is a whole longsegment that has these beautiful
if I can hold it up and peoplecan see.
So these beautiful prints, whichI find actually very useful,
because sometimes a picture, aphotograph that you might look
(28:18):
up if you were looking somethingup on the internet and you see
a photograph, it actually isn'tas helpful in identifying the
herb as a print that shows youthe root, the way the flowers
look and the way the plant looksat different stages of its
development, the seeds and so on.
And then there are excerptsfrom her writings about the
(28:39):
particular plant.
Then there's another sectionthat's remedies.
So taking a lot of the plantsshe spoke about and saying what
they're good for, and those gobeyond what you might find if
you were just doing a search forthem online, because she has
again, she's looking at thewhole person, including their
(29:01):
spiritual outlook.
So she is often saying what theuse of the plant would be for
the spiritual state of theperson, as well as for their
health, which is we need that,and it's true.
So I'll give you just a quicknote.
It's so interesting becausewhen I was thinking about my
medicinal garden and I wasthinking about planting things
(29:23):
purposefully in my garden, Irealized, oh, actually, a lot of
these things are literallyweeds.
They're literally things that Ido not need to plant in my
garden, because they just growin the brush or what have you
down my lane and I can gatherthem at will and it's really not
a problem.
And one of those things isgoldenrod, which is something
that I use a lot in my remedies.
(29:44):
It's just an all-aroundwonderful herb that comes out in
the end of summer.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Isn't that something?
Speaker 2 (29:49):
And I will say, like just to this point of the
physical benefit of the herb andthe spiritual.
So goldenrod is very good foryour overall health, for urinary
health, for all sorts of thingsand allergies.
But I noticed I would dry itand put it in the jar and then
(30:10):
when I went to get it to make atea I would open the jar and I
would smell it and I would justhave such a sense of well-being.
The scent of the golden rodjust gives you a wonderful sense
of happiness and well-being andit's kind of like we need that.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
And I think that grows anywhere, doesn't it?
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yeah, it's all out there, I think I have it around
my house.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Yeah, absolutely, Now I can use it.
So, so when we're talking aboutthis book, we're talking about
it's actually going to talkabout St Hildegard herself
because, she's fascinating toyour point.
And again, when I'm thinkingabout these young people, I mean
it's amazing how much, the moreyou look into the church, the
more you see these gifts andthese people coming in as gifts.
And when you're talking about.
(30:55):
You know the church doesn't,you know, respect women or
whatever, and you see this, youknow her, St Catherine of Siena
they went around talking to,like you said to popes, to, you
know, wrote writing letters toeverybody.
It's amazing that they have.
God brings them into this, intothis beautiful story and and
and you know they're exemplary.
(31:16):
I mean it's amazing beauty thatthey bring to us.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Yes, for sure.
And if we can just kind of getover this idea that everything's
in conflict and instead andthis is the beauty of the
churches to see that we're meantto cooperate in that.
And that's the medieval mind.
The medieval mind is aboutcooperating both with other
people and with nature and thecosmos.
And so I mean she had theEmperor Barbarossa writing to
(31:43):
her and saying, could you giveme medical advice?
And there was no conflict there.
Yeah, I think that if we'relooking at the church and her
saints, we just find think of itas like pockets and corners of
like.
I had no idea there was thisperson and she's so wonderful.
(32:03):
Then the last section of thebook is recipes, actually.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Okay, I was going to ask you.
Thank you, I was going to.
I bet you I would have forgotabout the recipes, and that's
important to all of us right Now.
Let me ask you this, lila withthe recipes, do we have to grow
this stuff ourselves?
Or somebody like me can pickthe book and say I want to make
this.
Can I go out and buy thoseherbs?
Can I find them around?
Speaker 2 (32:27):
I mean some of them, some of them.
So, for instance, the one thatI want to try is honey-filled
iris rhizomes.
So I think people have irisesin their gardens and they
multiply and eventually you haveto divide them and you can pull
up some of those rhizomes whichare very close to the surface
and prepare them and mix themwith honey, and that would be a
(32:52):
remedy for frenzy, nervouscrises, excessive excitement,
tremors, palpitations, and thenthere are things Isn't that
something Like heartpalpitations?
Yes, Heart palpitations.
Yeah, isn't that something?
Yeah, and I mean, if you lookedso this is some-.
I haven't ever looked into,like, what heart medications are
(33:12):
, but I bet if you looked intoit you would find out that there
was some derivative of theseplants in those medications.
So, personally, I would rathergo to my garden than I know has
not been sprayed or anything.
Then there's a here's a recipechestnuts with sage butter.
Now, I don't make my own butter.
Maybe some of our listenershave a dairy cow.
(33:33):
That would be awesome.
I wish I had a dairy cow.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Or a friend with a dairy cow.
One or the other, yes, right.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
And actually.
And then it calls for chestnutswhich I suppose you would buy.
But actually I do havechestnuts on my lane.
They are Chinese chestnuts andsome years.
If the weather has been right,I can go collect them.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
And I love sage, I love sage.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
You said chestnuts and sage Sage is very easy to
grow and in my zone is zone 6A,and the sage comes back.
It is perennial.
So I definitely these thingsare easy to grow.
That's not a problem growingsage.
But you can buy it for sure.
You could go to the farmer'smarket and get the sage.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
So we're getting a lot in this book and again we
can buy it from where From?
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Sophia, that's the best place to get it.
Yep, sophia Institute Press.
You can get it wherever you getbooks.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
You know I just want to put a plug in for Sophia
Institute Press and I'll makesure again I have it in the show
notes.
Sometimes it's going to take alittle longer to get to you.
It even might cost you $1 or $2more sometimes, but it's worth
it and it may not.
It may not.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Their shipping is pretty fast.
I have to say.
They ship things really fast,they're great.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
So if you're feeling good today, not only about the
book but about these Catholicpublishers, and try to support
them, anyways, that's just allI'll say about that.
Because I love fast things andyou know whatever too.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
But in this case, haven't you found that Amazon
has gotten super slow?
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Well, let's say no, I haven't found it, but it
doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
It doesn't matter.
Maybe it's where I live.
They're really slow.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Today we have a special on Sophia Institute
Press and I love them and theydo some incredible work.
It's worth going there, lila,isn't it?
Just to explore the books?
And they can find your booksthere, too, can't they?
Yep, yeah, so well, guys, we'regoing to start to unwind here a
little bit.
I'm going to give you the lastword, but you're such a joy and
thank you for taking the time,and I think you know this book
has got so many things in it,but I think, just for young
(35:38):
people coming in and old people,all of us coming in, and
getting to know this doctor, thechurch fascinating person
bringing us some you know, justto read what she was doing and
these natural ways to live andtake care of your body and some
good recipes back there, youknow, I'm definitely going to
put this book to use myself.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
I hope so.
Yeah, yeah, I always say healthcare is 90% or more in nursing
care.
The people in the family, themother of the family needs to
know how to take care of herchildren.
The resources are all around us.
So the book, I think, is veryhelpful in that.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Yes, well, thank you so much.
Thanks for joining us today.
Goodbye everyone.
We're going to ask you to joinus by helping us get the word
out, so if you could make sureyou subscribe and then hit like,
no matter which platform you'reon, remember that the Become
who you Are podcast is on audioand any music or podcast app
(36:35):
we're up on Rumble YouTube.
You can find us on X.
When you do subscribe, hit thelike button.
A couple of things to share withpeople Love Ed, love Ed is just
such an important apostolate,so it's in within our apostolate
the John Paul II Renewal Center.
This helps parents give thetalk to their children to push
(36:58):
back on all these genderideologies and the porn culture
and give children the truth anddo it through their parents, and
we help them do that.
The other one is really takenoff too.
It's Claymore Miletus Christi,soldiers for Christ.
That's where you see the swordbehind me.
That's the big sword.
That's our logo for Claymore.
Miletus Christi, soldiers forChrist.
That's where you see the swordbehind me.
That's the big sword.
That's our logo for Claymore.
(37:19):
That's a Claymore sword.
And this is for young people,especially young men Gen Z, high
school, all the way through.
Let's call it until they're 30years old or so, they're
starting to really understandthat something nefarious, very
toxic, is going on in theculture, and so they're stepping
into the church and we'rediscipling them.
So we want to help get the wordout about those things and,
(37:42):
lastly, consider financiallysupporting us.
Everything's in the show notes.
Hey, god bless you.
Thanks again.
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