15 May - Isidore the Laborer was born around 1070, near Madrid. Placed very young as a farm labourer, he worked for several masters. Faced with the arrival of the Saracens, he fled the Madrid region and continued his humble trade elsewhere.
It is said that he is the object of jealousy from the other workers, who accuse him of preferring to pray rather than work the land like them. Every Sunday, with his wife Maria Toribia, he sings at the lectern during High Mass and spends the rest of the day in prayer. However, his last boss, Juan de Vargas, made him his steward. The latter watches him to verify the assertions of the other workers: he surprises him in prayer, in ecstasy while the oxen continue to pull the plough, as if they were led by two angels. Dazzled, Juan de Vargas is converted.
He died around 1130. Miracles of healing multiplied at his tomb in the collegiate church of Saint-André-de-Madrid, and later, when his relics were transferred there, in the collegiate church of Saint-Isidore, or by drinking the water from the fountain that his prayer would have made gush forth from the ground on a day of great drought, King Philip III of Spain, who had been healed through his intercession, asked for his canonization. It was accepted by Pope Gregory XV and celebrated on March 12, 1622 (he had been beatified in 1619), together with those of Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, Francis Xavier and Philip Neri.
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