Feast day: May 15
St. Isidore the Farmer
A Spanish farm laborer who attended Mass every morning before work and shared his meager food with the poorer still.
Isidore was born about 1070 near Madrid, in Spain, to a poor family, and spent his whole life as a humble agricultural labourer, working the fields of a wealthy landowner just outside the city. He married a woman, María Torribia, who is also venerated as a saint, known in Spain as María de la Cabeza.
His life was utterly ordinary in its outward circumstances — a lifetime of ploughing, sowing, and reaping for another man's wages — yet sanctified through and through by prayer. He rose early each day to attend Mass before going to the fields, prayed constantly as he worked, and treated the poor and even the animals with tender generosity.
Many charming legends surround him, the most famous being that, when his fellow labourers complained that his praying made him late, his master found angels ploughing the field alongside him, so that his work was done. Another tells of him sharing his meal so freely with the hungry that the pot never emptied.
He died about 1130 and was canonized in 1622, in the same ceremony as Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, and Teresa of Ávila — a labourer set among the giants of the faith. He is the patron of farmers and farm workers, honoured for a holiness found entirely in faithful daily work.
Fellow workers complained he arrived late from morning Mass — until, legend says, they saw angels plowing alongside him to make up the time.
Image: artist unknown (CC BY 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/08189a.htm
Get a story like this every Sunday.