May 15, 2025

Saint of the Day for May 15:

Isidore the Farmer

(1070 – May 15, 1130)

Listen to Saint Isidore the Farmer’s Story Here

Isidore has become the patron of farmers and rural communities. In particular, he is the patron of Madrid, Spain, and of the United States National Rural Life Conference.

When he was barely old enough to wield a hoe, Isidore entered the service of John de Vergas, a wealthy landowner from Madrid, and worked faithfully on his estate outside the city for the rest of his life. He married a young woman as simple and upright as himself who also became a saint—Maria de la Cabeza. They had one son, who died as a child.

Isidore had deep religious instincts. He rose early in the morning to go to church and spent many a holiday devoutly visiting the churches of Madrid and surrounding areas. All day long, as he walked behind the plow, he communed with God. His devotion, one might say, became a problem, for his fellow workers sometimes complained that he often showed up late because of lingering in church too long.

He was known for his love of the poor, and there are accounts of Isidore’s supplying them miraculously with food. He had a great concern for the proper treatment of animals.

He died May 15, 1130, and was declared a saint in 1622, with Saints Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila, and Philip Neri. Together, the group is known in Spain as “the five saints.”

Reflection

Many implications can be found in a simple laborer achieving sainthood: Physical labor has dignity; sainthood does not stem from status; contemplation does not depend on learning; the simple life is conducive to holiness and happiness. Legends about angel helpers and mysterious oxen indicate that his work was not neglected and his duties did not go unfulfilled. Perhaps the truth which emerges is this: If you have your spiritual self in order, your earthly commitments will fall into order also. “[S]eek first the kingdom [of God] and his righteousness,” said the carpenter from Nazareth, “and all these things will be given you besides” (Matthew 6:33).

Saint Isidore the Farmer is the Patron Saint of:

Farmers
Rural Laborers

MINUTE MEDITATIONS

Loving God in Good Times and Bad

Clare’s language in her letters to Agnes of Prague is the forceful and sensuous language of desire: sighs, crying out, rejoicing, weeping, embracing, tasting, smelling, and kissing. All of which relates directly to the intimate knowledge of Christ effected through contemplation of his image through all the passages of his life. For Clare, to contemplate Christ is to fall in love with him, identify with him, and for love of his love to walk the walk with him, becoming thereby an image, a mirror of the Crucified Christ, which is what every Christian mystic is. In Clare’s life the mirror of the crucifix became most real to her in the long illness she endured, bedridden much of the time for years. Yet, even in suffering she served her sisters, often rising from her bed to minister to their needs, especially those who were themselves ill.

When I think of Saint Clare and what she did with her time all those bedridden years, poverty comes to me as a verb: she “poored.” She poored because that is where she met the poor Jesus, who was her mirror and bridegroom. Clare wrote of what it takes to “poor.” She wrote a Rule of Life that is the map of how she and her sisters were to poor. It was the first Rule of Life in the Church written by a woman. It was a Rule based on her and her sisters’ experience of pooring together. Their Rule became the expression of the way to embrace the mirror in whose embrace is realized the fullness of the human potential for loving God. Franciscan poverty as lived by Clare is the portal into the light that is already there unseen in the so-called dark night of the soul, in the darkness of abandonment by his Father that Jesus experienced on the cross. It is the contemplative union out of which is born the “child” that is good works, active love toward others.

—from the book Mystics: Twelve Who Reveal God’s Love
by Murray Bodo, OFM

PAUSE+PRAY

The Holiness of the Ordinary

Reflect

Have you ever allowed God to use the ordinary circumstances of your day to direct your growth? The conversations you have at work, the interruptions from your children, the chores and responsibilities that feel like they’re just getting in the way of what you want to accomplish: They are all given by God’s providence for our holiness.

Pray

Loving Jesus,
who proclaimed,
“blessed are the meek,”
give me the grace to remain meek and humble
as you direct the course of my day.
Help me to see that the perceived interruptions
are truly your intervention in my life.
Change my heart to recognize
that a change in plans is an opportunity
to say no to myself, and yes to you.
Amen

Act

Take time in a nightly examen to go over the day’s events to see how God is leading you more deeply in relationship with him through your everyday interactions.

Today's Pause+Pray was written by Martin J.P. Gianotti. Learn more here!