A Working Class Hero

Saint of the Day, May 15th: Isidore the Farmer

It can seem like most of the saints in our liturgical calendar are people who had enjoyed worldly power and influence in their lifetimes. Popes and kings, bishops and nobility, these seem to be the majority of those most recognized within the Communion of Saints.

Which is why I have such an appreciation for Isidore the Farmer.

Isidore spent his life as a farm worker. From childhood — “from the time he was able to hold the tools” is a phrase that seems to crop up often in his biographies — he worked as a laborer in the fields.

Isidore and his wife, Maria de la Cabeza, make up one of a very few of the Church’s Canonized married-couple saints. They had only one child who died at a very young age. But whatever love and generosity they would have given to children was offered instead to their poor and needy neighbors, to whom they gave generously even from their own meager resources.

Isidore woke early to attend Mass before each day’s work. And if some of his co-workers complained that he was late getting to the fields, his work did not seem to suffer. It’s said that the Angels would fill in for him as needed, so he wouldn’t have to sacrifice his spiritual life for his job. We might look to Isidore as a patron saint of maintaining a good work-life balance.

Isidore was a simple, humble worker who did his best to live a good life. He’s a saint for the common man, and we should have more like him.