From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Our pilgrimage on earth is a school   
      
   "As Christians, our task is to make daily progress toward God. Our   
   pilgrimage on earth is a school in which God is the only teacher, and   
   it demands good students, not ones who play truant. In this school we   
   learn something every day. We learn something from commandments,   
   something from examples, and something from sacraments. These things   
   are remedies for our wounds and materials for study."   
   --St. Augustine--(excerpt from Sermon 218c,1)   
      
   ===============   
   May 15th - St. Isidore the Farmer   
   (c. 1070-1130)   
      
   Not all the saints have been “of distinguished family”. Thus, the   
   parents of St. Isidore the Farmer (or “the Laborer”) were poor, and he   
   himself was poor. Yet he became venerated by kings, chosen as the   
   protector of Madrid, and invoked as patron of U.S. farmers.   
      
   He was a native of Madrid, named after the great 7th-century   
   archbishop of Seville, St. Isidore. If his parents were unable to   
   afford school for him, they at least taught him well their own love   
   for prayer and hatred for sin.   
      
   As soon as he was big enough to handle a hoe, Isidore was sent to work   
   for Juan de Vergas, a well-to-do farmer who raised crops outside of   
   Madrid. He would spend all his life in the employ of this one man.   
   Humdrum? Yes. But it was within this context that Isidore tried to   
   achieve, and did achieve, the holiness to which we are all called.   
   Eventually he met and married Maria Torribia, a young woman whose   
   ideals matched his own. When their one child died early, Isidore and   
   Torribia agreed to take private vows of continence.   
      
   Prayerfulness and generosity were the two characteristics that this   
   farm-hand developed in particular. It is a sign of his great   
   popularity that many legends developed about his life: the legends   
   simply underline his reputation for these two virtues.   
      
   First, his devotion to prayer. Each morning before work he would go to   
   church. One day, however, his fellow workers complained to Vergas that   
   by tarrying too long at church Isidore was shirking his morning labor.   
   The boss determined to check this report himself. Next day, Isidore   
   did indeed come later than the others. But just as Vergas was about to   
   scold him, he noticed that when Isidore started to plow, there were   
   two other plowmen on either side of him, guiding snow-white oxen not   
   of his own herd. Angels, it seems had been assisting the saint so   
   that, even though he stayed a little longer at church, his portion of   
   the work done was tripled.   
      
   It was usually in matters connected with his generosity that Isidore   
   became noted even during life for miracles. He was accustomed to share   
   his own scanty meals with the poor. One day when he came to attend a   
   dinner given by his religious confraternity, he picked up a crowd of   
   beggars en route from the church. Those in charge of the dinner were a   
   little annoyed. “We can’t possibly feed all of these,” they said. “We   
   have only one portion left--the one we have been saving for you.”   
   “That will be enough,” the saint replied. And it was. Multiplied   
   miraculously, Isidore’s dinner fed the whole group of unexpected   
   guests.   
      
   Revered during his life, Isidore became immensely popular as a   
   wonderworker after his death. Even the royal family joined his   
   admirers. He was said to have appeared in a vision to King Alfonso of   
   Castile in 1211 to show him a secret path by which to overtake and   
   conquer a Moorish army. King Philip II (1598-1621) was cured or a   
   mortal fever when the incorrupt, mummified body of the saint was   
   brought from its shrine into his sickroom. In 1622, at the urging of   
   the royal family, the Madrid farmer was at length canonized. It was at   
   the same ceremony in which St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Francis Xavier,   
   St. Teresa of Avila and St. Philip Neri of Rome were declared saints.   
      
   In the Spanish new world, too, St. Isidore became a beloved figure   
   especially among Indians and other agriculturists. In our own country,   
   the National Catholic Rural Life Conference adopted him as patron of   
   U.S. farmers, and got permission for the American Church to celebrate   
   his feast May 15th.   
      
   St. Isidore’s wife also came to be recognized as a saint: St. Maria   
   Torribia De Cabeza. Both of them teach an important lesson to all of   
   us. We can become saints in whatever state of life God assigns to us.   
   Holiness simply means doing His will where we are.   
      
   Saint Quote:   
   And when I hear it said that God is good and He will pardon us, and   
   then see that men cease not from evil-doing, oh, how it grieves me!   
   The infinite goodness with which God communicates with us, sinners as   
   we are, should constantly make us love and serve Him better; but we,   
   on the contrary, instead of seeing in his goodness an obligation to   
   please Him, convert it into an excuse for sin which will of a   
   certainty lead in the end to our deeper condemnation.   
   --St. Catherine of Genoa   
      
   Bible Quote:   
   :   "I was gazing into the visions of the night, when I saw, coming on   
   the clouds of heaven, as it were a son of man. He came to the One most   
   venerable and was led into his presence. On him was conferred rule,   
   honor and kingship, and all peoples, nations and languages became his   
   servants. His rule is an everlasting rule which will never pass away,   
   and his kingship will never come to an end."    Daniel 7:13-14   
      
   <><><><>   
   PRAYER   
      
   O God, Who hast doomed all men to die,   
   but hast concealed from all the hour of their death,   
   grant that I may pass my days   
   in the practice of holiness and justice,   
   and that I may deserve to quit this world   
   in the peace of a good conscience,   
   and in the embraces of Thy love.   
   Through Christ our Lord.   
      
   Amen.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)