'A matter of holiness with wheels under it '

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Yesterday we were posed a question by Daphne Pochin Mould: 'Can we, in fact, sum up the essential characteristics of the real Brigid and her life?' and we will bring this octave of posts in honour of our national patroness to a close with her answer:

To some extent, we can. Brigid is, in a sense, a democratic saint, a woman who made good in spite of the handicap of birth and breeding. She was, quite obviously, a girl of great determination and the ability to get her own way, she made up her mind to give herself wholly to God and overcame all the obstacles in her path. She was a woman of God and of prayer,  but if the legends mean anything at all, she was also a woman of the people. She did not cut herself off from the world inside the Kildare rath; she went out from it to help people, spiritually and materially, to bring aid wherever it was needed. This combination of total dedication to God, of the life of prayer with practical ability, knowledge and common sense, is still as much needed in modern life as in the Ireland of St. Brigid. The statues showing Brigid standing still are all wrong; they give an impression of a static saint; whereas the reality would seem to have been a matter of holiness with wheels under it, Brigid in her chariot with horses at the trot. The modern Irish woman can move a great deal faster, but the direction in which to steer remains a good one, and for which there is still a need.

D.D.C. Pochin Mould, Saint Brigid (Dublin and London, 1964), 74.

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