ST BRIDE’s, Fleet Street (the church where I’m currently Rector), is most famous today for its unique ministry to journalists, printers, and people working within the media — an association that goes back several centuries. Yet its roots are way more ancient. Our church, dedicated in honour of St Brigid of Kildare, was founded within 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 starting to witness how the Celtic tradition can touch the lives of those that wouldn’t previously have regarded themselves as conventional churchgoers.
This yr, 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 recent Bank Holiday has been instituted in her honour. On St Brigid’s Day (1 February), churches all over the world dedicated in her name held services in celebration, and, at noon (local time), joined together within 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 evangelise in St Brigid’s Cathedral, Kildare, on her feast day, at a national service of celebration to mark “Brigid 1500”. Later the identical day, I joined church leaders, politicians, and community representatives on 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 lots of the Celtic saints, Brigid is an elusive figure, whose story weaves together fact and embellishment in ways in which we are able to now not begin to disentangle. Yet there may be sufficient consistency within the accounts and traditions associated together with her for us to give you the chance to attract out themes which can be each timeless and changeless; and what emerges is a voice that actually can speak to our own age.
For example, there may be Brigid’s connectedness with creation and the natural environment. She was renowned for her love of, and respect for, animals; and it’s 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 just not like us; the one whom we’d so readily regard with suspicion and enmity. We are so in need of the healing of our relationships with each other.
One of the more engaging legends attached to Brigid is her (splendidly useful) ability to show bathwater into beer; indeed, probably the most famous prayer attributed to her extends this hospitality to the heavenly realm. It exists in various versions, however the core sentiment is consistent, and the wonderful sense of celebration and joy encapsulated within the prayer is infectious:
I would want an ideal lake of ale for the King of Kings;
I would want the family of heaven to be drinking it throughout life and time.
I would want the boys of Heaven in my very own house;
I would want vessels of peace to be given to them.
I would want joy to be of their drinking;
I would want Jesu to be here amongst them.
IN HER own day, in a world through 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 wealthy and artistic complementarity of our differences, including those of gender. We need that healing, too.
And Brigid was renowned for her peacemaking skills. Violence is simple. Committing ourselves to striving for peace and reconciliation with those from whom we’re 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 just by opening ourselves as much as the truth of the darkness that exists between the profoundly estranged, and by embracing the pain of the opposite, that we are able to begin to walk the trail of peace — just because the Good Samaritan sure the injuries of a person who would have been his persecutor.
ONE of the symbols related to 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 within the darkness — a darkness that can’t overcome it.
At St Bride’s, we discover a direct connection between this symbolism and the prayer that we are saying each morning as a part of the Church of England every day office, which incorporates the words: “As we rejoice within the gift of this recent day, so may the sunshine of your presence, O God, set our hearts on fire with love for you.” This serves as a every day reminder of our should be touched anew with the flame of St Brigid, to take her passion, her light, and her fire out right into a world that desperately needs it.
Many of the services held in Brigid’s honour on her feast day this yr were fully ecumenical, including the event held here at St Bride’s, and the service at her cathedral in Kildare. This felt as natural because it was fruitful; for Brigid pre-dates, by many centuries, every thing that divides our traditions today. We are united in and thru her, just because, in that sense, she belongs to us all.
The Revd Alison Joyce is the Rector of St Bride’s, Fleet Street, within the diocese of London.
