St. Brigid and the manger of Bethlehem

St Brigid and the Manger.
Last Saturday, February 1st, we remembered St. Brigid (sometimes spelt, Brigit).
Along with St. Patrick, she was Apostle to Ireland and is credited with him as one who proclaimed the Good News of Jesus Christ to the Irish people.
At that time the links between Ireland and what is now the southern part of Scotland were very strong. So Brigid(t) enjoys a special place in the hearts of both nations.
Her abbey was at Kildare in Ireland and, as in some parts of the Irish Christian tradition, it was a double monastery of both women and men. This practice was  later transferred to Northumbria via  the mission from Iona.

Many stories, traditions, myth and legends grew up around St Brigid, including one that suggests she was ordained Bishop to serve her Irish congregations. There is more evidence than not about this and if true, Brigid would have the honour of possibly being the first Woman Bishop in the Christian Church! That’s a thought for another time but one legend about her was brought to my attention by my dear friend, Heather Upfield, with whom I enjoyed a lovely friendship when we were both in Edinburgh. Her love of what we now call the Celtic spiritual tradition did much to feed and inspire my own love of it.
Earlier this week I received this note from her:

“In the Scottish tradition, St Bride was carried by angels from Iona to Bethlehem on Christmas Eve to be midwife to Mary at the Nativity. She then remained with the Holy Family till Mary and Joseph took the baby Jesus to the Temple. In the Candlemass mythology, she walked ahead of them carrying lighted candles, with a crown of lit candles on her head.” 

The painting above by John Duncan, painted in 1913, which is in the National Gallery of Scotland, is inspired by this story. The two angels are carrying the saint between them to Bethlehem.

Wanting to know more, who better to turn to than my friend, Heather? I happened to find an article, by her, on St Brigid which was published in 2017. Here is the part of that which refers to this story.

“In the mythology, St Bride is carried from the Isle of Iona, in the Inner Hebrides, to Bethlehem on Christmas Eve, to be mid-wife to Mary at the birth of Jesus. In the Ghaidlíg, she was known as‘Ban-Chuideachaidh Muire’ ‘knee woman of Mary’, as in the Hebrides, women gave birth on one knee.  Not only is she present at the birth of Jesus, but she also takes on the role of the Foster mother of Jesus – ‘Muime Chroisd’. In the Hebridean tradition, a Foster mother was considered more important than a natural mother. They took the view that any woman could become a mother – and be good or indifferent or bad. But the Foster mother took on the rearing of a child who was not her own, and this gave her greater status. In the eyes of the Hebrideans, therefore, St Bride is more important than St Mary and it is she who is considered the true Mary of the Gaels. A Hebridean prayer during labour was ‘Bride, Bride, Come in. Thy welcome is truly made. Give thou relief to the woman and give thou the conception to the Trinity’.
Following the Nativity, the Church celebrates Candlemas forty days after Christmas. St Bride is closely connected to this Festival. When Mary and Joseph carried the infant Jesus to the Temple, St Bride walked ahead of them. She wore a crown of candles and held a lighted candle in each hand. The flames stayed completely still and were not moved by the wind. In some traditions, Candlemas is known as Feast Day of St Bride of the Candles, and she herself is known as St Bride of Brightness.  The legend of the flames also corresponds with what we know of Oimelc (or Imbolc) as a Fire Festival.” 

[Brighid, St Brigid, St Bride, St Bride of the Isles and Scotland’ 
©Heather Upfield, www.brighid.org.uk/scotland_footprints.html, 16 April 2017.]

A certain caution must be exercised and possibly a suspension of belief in this story. It is part of a folklore which belongs to a people who understand the importance of myth as containing a kernel of truth rather than made-up fiction. Chronologically, of course, it can’t be an historical truth but there is more than one sort of truth, especially where angels are involved! Sometimes we have to move from the human realm to the heavenly to discover a new way of discovering the heart of God. Poetry, art, storytelling and music belong to this realm. Often words fail us in their bareness and logic but spring to life in a new way if we use our communication skills differently.

So the myth of St Brigid’s visit to Bethlehem and the echo of a Candlemass ceremony which is ascribed to St. Lucy in Scandinavia , are wonderful stories about new birth, tenderness, care and light. Bride’s visit to Bethlehem is also a delightful and fun story. Anything that brings a smile to our lives right now can only be good!

Thank you, Heather, for bringing this source of joy to my heart.

[If you wish to know more about the painting by John Duncan, go to the website of the National Gallery of Scotland.
Search for John Duncan and click on to the the very informative podcast]

Salvation ~ a Candlemas tale

SALVATION ~ a Candlemas tale.

[St Luke 2:28-40]

Joshua and I, Ahuz*, are doorkeepers of the Temple.
We greet people and try to make them welcome.
There are visitors and strangers and, of course, we have our regulars.
Like that old man over by the corner of sacrifice.
We don’t know where he lives but it must be nearby.
He’s always here as soon as the doors are open.

Then there’s Anna who seems to live in the Temple, in a dark, quiet place.
We know her because she has good connections.
She comes from the tribe of Asher and she’s the daughter of Phanuel and she’s a prophet, they say.

We’ve found out that the old man is called Simeon.
He has a stillness about him which suggests that he’s a man of prayer.
He behaves as if he loves God, which is more than most who come here!
Others are more like politicians, self-seekers, people who believe not in God but in their own religious importance.

Old Simeon has just noticed me and he smiles and bows towards me, making me feel human, wanted, needed.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spot the daughter of Phanuel who comes and grasps my cold hands and rubs them warm. It’s a kind gesture of gratitude for letting her wait.

I don’t really know what they are both waiting for but there is always an expectation about them.
I once asked the old man, Simeon, “What are you doing here? What are you waiting for?”
“Salvation”, he said quietly, “and a peaceful death.”

‘Salvation’, isn’t a word we hear in the Temple these days!
That’s what Joshua said, when I told him. “I reckon they’re on a fool’s errand.”
“Maybe”, I tell him, “but I’m not so sure. There’s a holiness about him and Anna, too. There’s wisdom as well, without any trace of self-boasting. They know things we don’t.”
Joshua laughed. “I’ve told you, they’re wasting precious time. They haven’t much left.”

Then, it happened. A young woman and a caring man came into the Temple, carrying a little vulnerable baby.  Purification. It’s like a thanksgiving after childbirth and an act of dedication.
So they made their offering to God and then Simeon shuffled to stand next to them. Anna drew near as well. Interesting! Is this what they were waiting for? Odd, though. How could a baby bring Salvation and hope?

Simeon took the child into his arms and praised God.
I quietly moved towards them, just as the old man began to speak.  “…let me go in peace…I have seen your Salvation…” Love shone in his eyes and in Anna, too.
I couldn’t make sense of it. How could a mere child be God’s fulfilment?
Simeon spoke again of the child, who would be God’s light not only to us, the Jewish people, but also to Gentiles – non-Jews.
You could see that the young couple were as perplexed as I was, but there was more. It was like a prophecy, about a future event, something about conflict the child would cause, some choosing for him, others against him. He would see into every heart; speaking of which, the young lady would also have her heart pierced as if by a sword. It would, without doubt, be a sword of pain and sadness but she seemed to smile a little as if she knew something we didn’t.
Why didn’t Simeon’s word worry her? Nothing would break up her serenity. It was as if she already seemed to live with God.

Then Anna took the child from Simeon’s hands and held him close, cherishing the one of  whom the prophets had spoken. They called him ‘The Messiah’ but this child was called, Jesus.
Where they the same? Was he the one for whom, in the depths of all our hearts we too have been waiting?

For a moment, as we all stood facing the child, the Temple was filled with silence, but it was such a stillness that it felt as though it trembled with the very breath of God.

Salvation had come to the Temple that day. I, Ahuv*, found it in that little child and, like myriads who came to recognize him, I was changed and loved and saved!

[Mr G. Candlemass 2025]

*Ahuv translates as “being loved” or “beloved.” The word ahuv comes from the Hebrew root aleph-hei-vet, which means, “to love.”

Holocaust – a story about forgiveness

Peacock Butterfly on thistle. photo by The Revd Lynn Hurry

Striving to forgive

Dr ELISABETH KUBLER-ROSS , a Swiss-born psychiatrist, who died in 2004, was renowned for her pioneering work on Death & Dying including identifying the stages of grief. She was also influential, with others, in the establishment of the hospice movement caring for dying children.
It may be that a profound influence for the development of this work began in 1946 when she visited a concentration camp in Maidanek, in Poland, where she met a young woman whose story affected her greatly.

On this National Holocaust Day 2025, the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, her story of that meeting is best told in her own words

“It started in Maidanek, in a concentration camp, where I tried to see how children had gone into the gas chambers after having lost their families, their homes, their schools and everything.
The walls in the camp were filled with pictures of butterflies, drawn by these children. It was incomprehensible to me. Thousands of children going into the gas chamber, and this is the message they leave behind–a butterfly. That was really the beginning.

In this concentration camp there was a Jewish girl, and she watched me.
I hope you understand, I was a very young kid naturally, who hadn’t gone through any windstorms in life. When you grow up in Switzerland, there is no race problem, no poverty, no unemployment, no slums, no nothing. And I went right into the nightmare of postwar Europe.
So I asked her, how can men and women, like you and I, kill hundreds and thousands of innocent children, and the same day they do that, day after day, they worry about their own child at home who has chicken pox. It just didn’t compute in my brain, you know, being very innocent and ignorant.
This young woman had lost all her brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents in a gas chamber. She was the last one they tried to squash in, and there wasn’t room for one more person, so they pulled her out.
What she didn’t understand was that she had already been crossed off the list of the living. They never got back to her. She spent the rest of the war years in this concentration camp swearing that she would stay alive to tell the world about all the atrocities that she witnessed.
When the people came to liberate the camp, she said to herself, “Oh my God, if I spend the rest of my life telling about all these horrible things, I would not be any better than Hitler himself.
I would plant seeds of hate and negativity.”
She made at that moment a promise to whoever she talked to, God presumably, that she would stay in the concentration camp until she could learn to forgive even a Hitler. When she had learned that lesson, then she would be worthy of leaving.
Do you understand that? The last thing she said to me was, “If you would only know that there is a Hitler in every human being!” If we can acknowledge that Hitler and get rid of it, she said, we could then become like, what we now would say is, Mother Theresa.”

May that young lady’s story help us to hear a message we need to learn and to give thanks that her story led to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross to pioneer palliative care for suffering children.

[** You can learn more about Elisabeth Kubler-Ross on the Website of the EKS Foundation.]