News — cast off evil

Have your petition with a fixed, dressed, and blessed light set on my St. Benedict altar and burned for you in a community altar work service for St. Benedict of Nursia. Lights will be set the night of Tuesday, July 11th. There is some wiggle room and you can join up after the work starts as long as you see that there are still spots left and it doesn’t say “sold out.” St. Benedict is Catholicism’s exorcist par excellence, invoked for protection, driving away evil, and dodging the snares of the wily serpent, with the power to banish Satan himself in the...

This is a three-day service beginning the night of August 24th, the feast day of St. Bartholomew. There is some wiggle room and you can join up after the work starts as long as you see that there are still spots left and it doesn’t say “sold out.” St. Bartholomew is the patron saint of bookbinders, butchers, tanners, and cheese makers. Some very brief and pretty confusing scriptural references mean he’s numbered among the original apostles, so we don’t know that much about him as a historical figure. But as is so often the case, rich folk traditions have filled in the gaps. His strong...