St. Isidore, the Patron Saint of Farmers, and Holiness

Today is the Memorial of St. Isidore.  Actually, it’s an optional memorial but I chose to use the opening prayer and antiphon for St. Isidore at Mass this morning for three reasons.

First, because he is the patron saint of farmers, in fact he was a farmer himself, and since I like to eat, I consider farmers very important.  Farmers don’t get enough credit.  We need food and so we need them.

Second, in the United States he is the patron saint of the National Rural Life Conference.  This places him a little higher on the list of memorials for saints.

Third, his wife, Maria de la Cabeza (Torribia) is also canonized as a saint.  So they can be a model of holiness in marriage.

St. Isidore was a man devoted to God.  He is known as having spent his time plowing in the fields contemplating the glory of God, the same glory that Jesus speaks of in today’s gospel.  I hope we all recognize the presence of God in church at Mass.  I hope you pray at home and feel God’s presence there.  How about in the ordinary things of your life?  St. Isidore could find God in his work as a farmer.  Can you find God in the work you do?

The more we are aware of God’s presence in the ordinary moments of our lives, the more we can be like Paul in today’s first reading who felt “compelled by the Spirit” to go to Jerusalem and was willing to go even though he wasn’t sure what would happen to him there.  He was in tune with God and trusted in God.

So, today let us ask for St. Isidore’s intercession for our farmers to have a good year and we ask St. Isidore’s intercession to help for each of us to find God in the ordinary events of our lives.

Peace,

Fr. Jeff