Celebrating St Brigid
Sunday 22nd February 2026, led by Patricia Higgins
St Brigid Cross
Gathering
As we gather together here today we are remembering St Brigid, the female patron saint of Ireland, and celebrating her role in the development of Christianity on Ireland. Her feast day on February 1st was declared a public holiday in Ireland in 2023 - the first for a woman.
Introduction
St Brigid’s Day on February 1st was originally the celebration of a pagan female goddess of Ireland called Brigid. Long before Christianity reached Ireland, people observed Imbolc on February 1st - one of the four major Gaelic festivals. Imbolc focused on fertility, preparation and survival after Winter. When Christian tradition placed St Brigid’s ideas on the same day, many older customs carried on under the same name. The day still speaks to renewal, fertility, care for others, and respect for natural cycles. St Brigid’s day is a reminder of how people relate to time, land and community, and their continued importance in daily life
Brigid is honoured for her role as abbess, founder of monasteries and patron of farming, healing, poetry and generosity. She founded a double monastery in Kildare which welcomed both women and men. The site itself was already a sacred pagan shrine dedicated to the Celtic goddess Brigid. It grew to become one of the most important centres of learning and spirituality in medieval Ireland and was famous throughout Europe. Brigid’s life is a testament to generosity and celebration of love in all its diversity.
Reading
She is the gentle wind
whispering through the fields
she is the cool water
flowing from the sacred well.
Mary O’Brian
Individual contemplative time (15 minutes)
Here we have an opportunity to use the garden as a space of contemplation. If you are online, you are invited to be with a plant either in your home or garden to contemplate the natural world.
Regathering
If you would like to, please do share any response you may have.
Reading
And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you’ll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
‘Postscript’ by Seamus Heaney
Concluding prayer and blessing
May the nourishment of the earth be yours
May the clarity of light be yours
May the fluency of the ocean be yours
May the protection of the ancestors be yours
And may a slow wind
work these words of love around you
An invisible cloak
To mind
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.
Amen
‘A blessing’ John O’Donaghue
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