Brigid: Flame of Justice and Peace
The Brigid room accommodates pilgrim groups who like to share and celebrate the story of St. Brigid in a creative and life-giving way.
It is also available for rent to groups interested in meditation, mediation, visioning and planning. It can accommodate up to 40 people.
The Brigid Flame
The Brigid room is where the Brigid Flame, re-lit in 1993, is tended. It burns today as a beacon of hope, justice and peace for our world.
Fire can be a symbol of the Divine Presence within each of us. We are all called to reconnect with the fire at a deep and ancient part of our being where we are all interconnected with each other and all life.
You will be able to spend some quiet time in the Brigid room on your visit to Solas Bhride.
A brief history of the Flame
A sacred flame burned in Kildare reaching back to pre-Christian times. Scholars suggest that priestesses used to gather on the hill of Kildare to tend their ritual fires while invoking a goddess named Brigit to protect their herds and to provide a fruitful harvest.
When St Brigid built her monastery and church in Kildare she continued the custom of keeping a fire alight. For St. Brigid the fire represented the new light of Christianity, the Light of Christ, which reached our shores early in the fifth century. Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis) a Welsh Chronicler who visited Kildare in the twelfth century reported that the fire of St. Brigid was still burning in Kildare and that it was being tended by nuns of St Brigid.
In 1993, a year after the arrival of the Brigidine sisters to Kildare town, the sacred flame was re-lit in the Market Square at the opening of a Justice & Peace conference hosted by Afri and the Brigidine Sisters in celebration of the tenth anniversary of St. Brigid’s Peace Cross Project. As a result the Flame has been carried to many peace conferences around the world. Since then the Flame has been tended by the Brigidine sisters in the Solas Bhride centre.
