Unequally Yoked
Last month, I did a pretty terrible job trying to pick a saint for the month and try to expand my understanding of the Communion of Saints. I really do rely on getting to know Saints (and anyone, honestly) through text, so it was hard for me to build up any rapport with St Andrew Corsini or to think of him at all without something to read.
But, as Advent begins again, I’m trying again, and this time Jen Fulwiler’s Saint Generator assigned me St. Isidore. The Farmer. In the middle of the winter when I barely go outside anyway.
The very fact that he’s so mismatched to abstracted, tech-minded me suggest he’d be good to cultivate, so I can develop any talents or opportunities for service that I’ve been neglecting. I have one idea already that I’m definitely not going to try: buying some kind of houseplant and watering it while saying Evening Office or something.
One of you can take on that discipline, but when someone gave me an orchid for a birthday present, I immediately gave it away to a coworker. I don’t want to sign up for an ongoing responsibility to something that won’t ever be a human.
But I did have another idea in the same vein. I discarded my sourdough starter when I moved away from DC, but I’m planning to restart soon. I could remember St. Isidore when I feed the starter weekly. And, in order to actually remember him, I would probably tape this prayer to him to the jar:
O God, Who didst teach Adam the simple art of tilling the soil, and Who through Jesus Christ, the true vine, didst reveal Thyself the husbandman of our souls, deign, we pray, through the merits of Blessed Isidore, to instill into our hearts a horror of sin and a love of prayer, so that, working the soil in the sweat of our brow, we may, with Christ our Lord, enjoy eternal happiness in heaven. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. – Prayer to Saint Isidore, Patron of Farmers; from The Fold, August 1953
Any other, better suggestions?
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