Candlemas in Europe, New Year's Day for the Chinese and Aztecs, and Groundhog's Day in America all fall in early February alongside St. Brigid's February 1st Feast Day, a time of purification, blessing, and reawakened creativity. At this time of year, many of us feel we need a miracle. We can gratefully take heart from the countless ones ascribed to St. Brigid, closely associated with the Celtic goddess by the same name, meaning “Bright One.” Her miracles most often involve gifts of milk and other maternal nurture. Knowing how greatly the Earth, our home, needs solicitous care, we can join together in the Gaelic invocation to her: “May Brigid give blessing to the house that is here; Brigid, the fair and tender, her hue like the cotton-grass, rich-tressed maiden with ringlets of gold.” - Patricia Carlson

“I would like a great lake of beer for the King of the kings;  I would like the people of heaven to be drinking it through time eternal.”

Brigid lived in the era when traditional Irish religion was giving way to the formal institution of Christianity. The lives and legends of holy Brigid reflect that uneasy ebb and flow. It has been noted that in ancient times Brigid was, in fact, the name of the Celtic sun goddess. This has given rise to the suggestion that in St. Brigid, a nun and abbess of the fifth century, we see the repository of primeval religious memories and traditions. In any case, it seems that with the cult of St. Brigid (called “The Mary of the Gael”) the Irish people maintained the image of the maternal face of God with which to complement the more patriarchal religion of St. Patrick and subsequent missionaries.

As best as can be discerned through the mists of legend, it is believed that Brigid was born into slavery and was later converted to Christianity by St. Patrick sometime in her childhood. She was granted her freedom when it proved impossible to curb her enthusiasm for giving alms; it seems she would otherwise have impoverished her master through such unauthorized largesse.

The themes of generosity and compassion are the feature of miracles without number. Brigid's only desire was “to satisfy the poor, to expel every hardship, to spare every miserable man.” (That there remained any miserable souls in Ireland is hard to believe, given the extent of her recorded miracles.) Many of her marvels have a particularly maternal character, reflecting her propensity to nourish and give succor. Thus, “She supplied beer out of her own barrel to eighteen churches, which sufficed from Maundy Thursday to the end of the paschal time. Once a leprous woman asking for milk, there being none at hand she gave her cold water, but the water was turned into milk, and when she had drunk it the woman was healed.”

Brigid became a nun and ultimately abbess of Kildare, which was a double monastery, consisting of both men and women. Through her fame as a spiritual teacher the Abbey of Kildare became a center for pilgrims. So great was the authority of Brigid, it seems, that she even induced a bishop to join her community and to share her leadership. According to legend – which the church, for obvious reasons, has strenuously resisted – the bishop came to ordain Brigid as a fellow bishop.

Some chroniclers cite this in a matter-of-fact way (it is, after all, scarcely less credible than many of the reports of Brigid's career). Others report the story while trying in some way to mitigate the scandal. It is suggested, for instance, that the bishop was so “intoxicated with the grace of God” that he didn't know what he was doing. Whatever the historical facts, the persistence of such a tale says a good deal about Brigid's status in the Irish conscience, and perhaps the effort to rectify the exclusion of such an extraordinary woman from the ranks of apostolic authority.

Additional Resources
See: Hugh de Blacam, The Saints of Ireland (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1942); Mary Condren, The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion, and Power in Celtic Ireland (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989).