Patron saint of 2014

I've been using the saint generator here to choose a patron saint for the past few years.

Last year my patron saint was St. Jude, patron of desperate situations and impossible/lost causes.  I think fixing our IF is getting to be close to lost, so St. Jude seemed an appropriate choice.  I also asked him to pray that DH would find a job, which I knew would be a difficult process.  Neither prayer has been answered yet with a "yes."  I hope a year's worth of prayers from him have some kind of good effect.  I know they weren't in vain.  Maybe both requests are so close to impossible that we need more than a year's worth of prayers from the saint known to make the impossible happen (well, God makes it happen but St. Jude intercedes).

Even though DH has been out of work for more than a year, I am impressed with his attitude, which I think is a major fruit of those prayers.  He's been unemployed for a long stretch before, and he became very pessimistic and angry about the situation.  So far he's in good spirits and is optimistic, even though it's taking longer than he hoped.  The vast majority of the hiring in his field takes places once a year, so most of the time he is just waiting and looking if there are new jobs posted (all of which will be filled in the summer).  I'm still asking begging St. Jude for prayers that DH finds a job this year.

So who is my patron saint for 2014?

(source)

St. Isidore the Farmer

Feast Day:  May 15

Here's the list of things he is patron of:

• against the death of children
• farmers
• laborers
• ranchers
• rural communities
• livestock
• for rain

At first I was like, "Really?  Did this saint generator malfunction?"

I'm not a farmer.  I would need to have children before I could pray that they don't die.

So I looked him up.  His only son died at a young age.  He and his wife were convinced it was God's will that they not have any more children.  The article I found said they lived together "in chastity" the rest of their lives, but I think it meant "in continence" (no intercourse during marriage).  If they lived chastely, they weren't necessarily avoiding all intercourse but could have been using NFP to avoid pregnancy or whatever version of periodic abstinence was popular in the year 1100.  :)

Then it made more sense.  He and his wife were a childless couple for most of their marriage.  His wife is a canonized saint also--St. Mary de la Cabeza.  Yes, I can definitely use the prayers of someone who knows what it's like to live without children (even if they chose it and I didn't).  Hopefully he doesn't mind praying that we could have children, but if he wants to pray for us to find peace living without children, that would be welcome too.

St. Isidore the Farmer, pray for us!

"To ensure that the saints pray and intercede for us, we must invoke them and ask their help. The best way to celebrate their feasts is to realize the power they have with God for obtaining the graces of which we stand in need. Our Lord is so pleased when we profit from the intercession of the saints that, wishing to bestow on us some favor, He often inspires us to seek their mediation and invites us to ask them to pray for us. With full confidence we should seek their help and turn to them, especially on their feast days, without doubting for a moment that they will listen to us and will obtain for us what we are asking." ~St. Francis de Sales