Saint Brigid Day & Cross

 

Saint Brigid’s Cross

Thur 1 Feb 2024

is Saint Brigid’s Day

 

 

Brigid’s cross or Bridget’s cross is a small cross woven from rushes and has four arms tied at the ends and a woven square in the middle.

Brigid’s crosses are associated with Saint Brigid, a patron saint of Ireland and of babies, infants and more…

The crosses are traditionally made on St Brigid’s feast day, 1 February, Lá Fhéile Bríde, marking the beginning of Spring and the famous SOFT Coffee mornings and family Outings! And Mon 5th Feb 2024 is a Public Holiday

Put a St Brigid’s cross in a place of honour in your home, to protect against fire, evil spirits, and any kind of harm

Why not light a candle, say a prayer and have a nice cup of Nescafe coffee on St Brigid’s Day

Just in case you missed this interesting article

A relic of Irish saint Brigid has returned to her home town after around 1,000 years away.

Hundreds of people gathered in Kildare on Sunday morning for a special church service to mark the historic occasion.

The homecoming event, which also saw a procession to the church, was held in what is believed to be the 1,500th anniversary year of St Brigid’s death.

Brigid, a renowned peace-maker, was buried beside the main altar at a monastic church in Kildare, with her grave becoming a shrine for visiting pilgrims.

Around 300 years later, when the Vikings were raiding Ireland, her remains were moved to Downpatrick Cathedral in present-day Northern Ireland for safekeeping. There they were buried in an unmarked grave alongside Saint Patrick and Saint Columba.

Over the next centuries the location of the grave was apparently lost.

According to Christian history, in 1185 the Bishop of Down prayed to God to show him the location of the three saints’ relics and a beam of light shone on a spot of the church’s floor, leading to the rediscovery of the remains.

The relics remained as a shrine at the church for the next 400 years before it was reputedly destroyed by Lord Leonard Grey, an appointee of King Henry VIII.

Despite the destruction of the shrine, the relics were apparently saved and spirited away to the Continent, with tradition holding that three Irish knights took a fragment of St Brigid’s remains to a small town outside Lisbon in Portugal called Lumiar.

That relic is still venerated in the church of St John the Baptist in Lumiar today.

A portion of the relic was brought back to Ireland in the 1930s by the Brigidine Sisters in Tullow, Co Carlow. That is now being moved to St Brigid’s parish church in Kildare, where it will be housed in a specially designed shrine.

Sunday’s event saw locals accompany the relic in a procession from Solas Bhride Centre in Tully, outside Kildare town, to the church, where a special Mass was held.

The ceremony came ahead of St Brigid’s Day in Ireland on February 1.