November 27, 2022 - "Saint Isidore of Seville"

One of the memories that my Great Aunt Celestine Dougherty and her older brothers James and John Dougherty had during their years in elementary school was one year when they all had the same brand-new teacher who was assigned by the principal to teach several grades in one classroom in the local public school.  Their teacher, a recent graduate of East Stroudsburg Middle School, was their oldest sister Anna.  Anna had told them that they could address her by her first name at home-- where they all lived with their widowed grandmother.  But at school they had to address her as Miss Dougherty since she was their teacher.  Of course, it didn’t take long for them to test this. The reaction was swift.  Anna Dougherty wasn’t going to take any nonsense.  I am particularly interested in their older sister Anna, because in time she became my paternal grandmother.  Even though she had retired from the classroom when she married my paternal grandfather John Coady Dillon, Grandma Dillon kept a close eye on the academic progress of her children and grandchildren. And I can assure you that she could be stern when she thought the occasion called for that.  Once a teacher, always a teacher.
 
In a way I can empathize with the experience St. Isidore of Seville, the Doctor of the Church, whom we are looking at this week. When Isidore was a boy, he ran away from home and from school.  Isidore’s teacher was his brother Leander, who was about twenty years older than Isidore.  Leander was a very demanding teacher, and one day Isidore had had enough. While Isidore sat by himself out in the woods, loafing, he noticed some dripping water had worn a hole in a hard rock.  Isidore pondered this for a while and came to the realization that he could do what the little drops of water had managed to do. Little by little, by sticking to it, Isidore could learn all that his brother demanded, and maybe even more.
 
Isidore (560?-636) was born in Cartagena in Spain to a family that included three other saints. One of the saints was his elder brother Leander, whom he succeeded as bishop of Seville.  The seventy-six years of Isidore’s life were full of conflict as well as growth for the Church in Spain.  The Visigoths had invaded the Iberian Peninsula about 150 years before Isidore was born.  The Visigoths were Arians—Christians who said that Christ was not God.  Sixth and seventh century Spain was split in two:  one people (Catholic Romans) struggling with another (Arian Goths). Isidore was successful in uniting Spain and making it a center of culture and learning.  He served as a guide for other European countries that were also threatened by barbarian invaders.
 
Isidore became an amazingly learned individual.  Indeed, some people called him “The Schoolmaster of Europe” because the encyclopedia he wrote was used as a textbook for 900 years.  He required seminaries be established in every diocese, he wrote a Rule for religious orders, and founded schools that taught every subject.  In addition to the encyclopedia, Isidore wrote a dictionary, a history of the Goths, and a history of the world that began with creation.  He completed the Mozarabic liturgy, which is still used in the cathedral in Toledo, Spain.

He was always a charitable man but during the last six months of his life he increased his charities so much that his house was crowded from morning until night with the poor from the countryside who were looking for assistance.
 
Until next week,
Fr. John