This page contains an extract from a homily given in St.Isidore's and will be updated occasionally with a fresh thought for the day.

Bishop Thomson , Posted : 24th July 2004
Bishop Francis Thomson, my predecessor as parish priest, always took great delight in telling the story of the local children who came to the house one evening looking for wood - I think for their Guy Fawke's bonfire on November 5th.
He told them to help themselves to a pile of it in the woodshed in the backyard which they duly did. When they returned to say thanks, like the good little lepers they were, he had gone out, but Vanette, the housekeeper was told to "say thanks very much to Saint.Isidore for the wood".

The thought of him being equated with St.Isidore confused the bishop no end. And yet Isidore would not be out of place here - the dogs asleep in the kitchen,(I hope) the sheep and lambs are in the field, the trees are in blossom and the planting is still to be done in the vegetable garden - all would be familiar signs of home to him. Perhaps the temperature would have been a degree or twp warmer and instead of the rhubarb there may have been a few vines. But all in all, it fits well. Isidore fits well with us.

But how well do we fit with Isidore? I mean, is there any danger that the locals mistake us for him - a man who dedicated his ordinary working day to God and who found time at the end of it to share the little he had with those who had less? That's where we have to learn to fit in with out parish patron saint.

It was lovely that the children should mistakenly equate the gentle big man, Bishop Francis, for our parish patron; it would be even better if, in the way we go about our everyday work, even the most menial of tasks, and in the way we care for the poor and underprivileged, everybody mistook us for the Madrid farmer and recognised that the spirit of St.Isidore is alive and well and living in Biggar.