• Our Parish Patron, St. Isidore the Farmer

   

  • Born in Madrid, Spain around 1070 or 1080; died in 1150

   

  • Worked as a poor farm laborer who started each day with Mass, and who shared his food with the poor and his crops with hungry birds in the winter

   

  • Canonized in 1622

   

  • Patron of farmers, laborers, rural communities, livestock, Madrid, and child death (he and his wife lost their only child)

   

  • His wife Maria was beatified in 1697.

   

  • Feast day is May 15th.

   

  • He is depicted with farming tools, oxen, and sometimes angels in the field helping him. One legend says that upon arriving late for work after attending morning Mass, other field workers complained about him not doing his share of the work—until he was seen with two angels plowing next to him.

   

  • In addition to the St. Isidore statue outside our front doors, we have one in the front right corner inside the church (shown below). We have a relic of St. Isidore displayed in the oil cabinet near the baptismal font. The stained glass window in the narthex facing Thomas Road shows St. Isidore harvesting a crop, helped by an angel in blue glass standing behind him.

  
      At the time our parish began, the area around the church was very rural and agricultural. St. Isidore the Farmer, pray for us and obtain a plentiful harvest of souls for Heaven!
   
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