ST BRIDE’s, Fleet Street (the church where I am currently Rector), is most famous today for its unique ministry to journalists, printers, and those working in the media — an association that goes back several centuries. Yet its roots are far more ancient. Our church, dedicated in honour of St Brigid of Kildare, was founded in the sixth century by Irish religious; and the rediscovery of our Irish origins, reconnecting us with our Celtic spiritual heritage, is proving to be profoundly enriching and a source of inspiration for us all. We are also beginning to witness how the Celtic tradition can touch the lives of those who would not previously have regarded themselves as conventional churchgoers.
This year, Ireland is celebrating the 1500th anniversary of the death of St Brigid — and doing so in spectacular fashion: Brigid has officially been elevated to the status of Ireland’s “matron saint”, alongside its patron saint, St Patrick, and a new Bank Holiday has been instituted in her honour. On St Brigid’s Day (1 February), churches around the world dedicated in her name held services in celebration, and, at noon (local time), joined together in the observance of a “Pause for Peace”: a minute’s silence in memory of this remarkable saint.
I had the privilege of being invited to preach in St Brigid’s Cathedral, Kildare, on her feast day, at a national service of celebration to mark “Brigid 1500”. Later the same day, I joined church leaders, politicians, and community representatives at the Curragh Racecourse in Co. Kildare, to witness the extraordinary sight of 3000 local school students forming a “living” Brigid Cross: a remarkable feat of organisation, and a wonder to behold (News, 9 February).
LIKE many of the Celtic saints, Brigid is an elusive figure, whose story weaves together fact and embellishment in ways that we can no longer begin to disentangle. Yet there is sufficient consistency in the accounts and traditions associated with her for us to be able to draw out themes that are both timeless and changeless; and what emerges is a voice that really can speak to our own age.
For example, there is Brigid’s connectedness with creation and the natural environment. She was renowned for her love of, and respect for, animals; and it is singularly appropriate that her cross is traditionally woven from straw or rushes — plucked from the earth itself. We are so in need of the healing of our relationship with creation.
She was also legendary for her gift for hospitality, which entails embracing the stranger — the very person whom we regard as “other”; the one who is not like us; the one whom we might so readily regard with suspicion and enmity. We are so in need of the healing of our relationships with one another.
One of the more engaging legends attached to Brigid is her (splendidly useful) ability to turn bathwater into beer; indeed, the most famous prayer attributed to her extends this hospitality to the heavenly realm. It exists in various versions, but the core sentiment is consistent, and the wonderful sense of celebration and joy encapsulated in the prayer is infectious:
I would wish a great lake of ale for the King of Kings;
I would wish the family of heaven to be drinking it throughout life and time.
I would wish the men of Heaven in my own house;
I would wish vessels of peace to be given to them.
I would wish joy to be in their drinking;
I would wish Jesu to be here among them.
IN HER own day, in a world in which women had no legal status, few rights, and little voice, Brigid earned the respect of all who encountered her — an authority that was hard-won, and required immense courage on her part. In granting her joint recognition alongside St Patrick as a national saint, Ireland is by implication acknowledging the rich and creative complementarity of our differences, including those of gender. We need that healing, too.
And Brigid was renowned for her peacemaking skills. Violence is easy. Committing ourselves to striving for peace and reconciliation with those from whom we are alienated and estranged is unimaginably hard, because true peacemaking can never be achieved by ignoring or underplaying the differences between us — particularly when those divisions are generations old, and mired in centuries of bloodshed, injustice, and mistrust.
By all accounts, Brigid was fearless in her pursuit of peace, and her peacemaking required courage. As Christ showed us, it is only by opening ourselves up to the reality of the darkness that exists between the profoundly estranged, and by embracing the pain of the other, that we can begin to walk the path of peace — just as the Good Samaritan bound the wounds of a man who would have been his persecutor.
ONE of the symbols associated with Brigid is a circle of flame. The story goes that she took over a pre-Christian Celtic tradition in Kildare of the tending of a perpetual fire, and reclaimed it for Christ, whose light shines on in the darkness — a darkness that cannot overcome it.
At St Bride’s, we find a direct connection between this symbolism and the prayer that we say each morning as part of the Church of England daily office, which includes the words: “As we rejoice in the gift of this new day, so may the light of your presence, O God, set our hearts on fire with love for you.” This serves as a daily reminder of our need to be touched anew with the flame of St Brigid, to take her passion, her light, and her fire out into a world that desperately needs it.
Many of the services held in Brigid’s honour on her feast day this year were fully ecumenical, including the event held here at St Bride’s, and the service at her cathedral in Kildare. This felt as natural as it was fruitful; for Brigid pre-dates, by many centuries, everything that divides our traditions today. We are united in and through her, simply because, in that sense, she belongs to us all.
The Revd Alison Joyce is the Rector of St Bride’s, Fleet Street, in the diocese of London.