Saturday, November 1, 2014

Paging the patron saint of the Internet


It is the first day of November, All Saints Day, anciently known as the Feast of All Hallows. Which makes me wonder:

Who is the patron saint of Web logs?

Who is the patron saint of the Internet?

It is St. Isidore of Seville!

I am reading St. Isidore's bio which says that he was born in Cartegena and his siblings were all saints too. They are Leander, Fulgentius and Florentina and he is often known as the Schoolmaster of the Middle Ages.

Here is a story I like.

Once, when Isidore was a boy, he ran away from home and from school. His brother Leander, some twenty years older than he, was his teacher, and a very demanding one. While Isidore sat by himself out in the woods, loafing, he watched some drops of water falling on a rock. Then he noticed that the dripping water had worn a hold in the hard rock! The thought came to him that he could do what the little drops of water did. Little by little, by sticking to it, he could learn all his brother demanded, and maybe even more.

That is what my Pennario book work is like. Little by little, one drop after another, and we wear down the rock.

It is the reason I have not been Web logging, getting my act together with the writing I have to do. I have been up early and up late and in between the time flies. But now in the spirit of St. Isidore I am picking the Web log back up, and I will be posting every day, God willing, and St. Isidore interceding.

That is St. Isidore of Seville at the top of this post! Hahaha... I did a Google search on St. Isidore and this gentleman kept appearing:


And I was thinking: He, while doubtless very pious, does not look like the Schoolmaster of the Middle Ages!

Then I learned that this was St. Isidore the Farmer. I did a search for St. Isidore of Seville.

Ah. This was more like it!


That looks more like him! That statue presides over Spain's National Library, in Madrid.

St. Isidore of Seville, pray for us.

And for our books and our Web logs!

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