Homiletic and Pastoral Review Magazine
Book Reviews – November 2023
Godhead Here in Hiding Whom I Do Adore – Lay Fraternity of St. Dominic
Lay Fraternity of St. Dominic. Godhead Here in Hiding Whom I Do Adore: Lay Dominicans Reflect on Eucharistic Adoration. Hammondsport, NY: The Lay Fraternity of St. Dominic, 2023. 351 pages.
Reviewed by Fr. Ignatius John Schweitzer, OP.
(Reprinted here with permission)
As part of the effort toward Eucharistic Revival, the Dominican Laity have released an inexpensive new book on Eucharistic Adoration, Godhead Here in Hiding Whom I Do Adore: Lay Dominicans Reflect on Eucharistic Adoration. It is a unique and exceptional book worthy of the parish’s adoration chapel and also as a gift for a friend who has yet to discover the Eucharist. The book gathers together about 175 reflections of Lay Dominicans on what Eucharistic adoration means to them, what they do during a holy hour, ways that the Eucharist has transformed them, and their experience of the Lord Jesus in adoration. There are also some appendices with prayers and other useful tools for times of adoration. A few other Dominican friars, nuns, and sisters, who are linked to the laity, round out the reflections in a book that is accessible and substantial enough for the edification of laity, clergy, and religious alike.
The priority was given to drawing together a symphony of voices, with varying styles, rather than aiming for a well-crafted literary masterpiece. Hence the reflections are of varying literary quality, yet they all pulsate with life as they come from the heart. The collection nevertheless does contain many well-polished reflections, for instance, of an author who has published a half-dozen other books on Eucharistic adoration or from another Lay Dominican who is a published poet. There are eloquent prayers, including a litany, penned in honor of the Eucharist. There are moving personal testimonies demonstrating the difference between life before and after coming to know and love the Eucharist.
This book is true to life and shows how the Eucharistic mystery can also transform our own lives. If one reflection does not speak to you, you can simply move on to the next one. The particularities of the individual’s situation in these essays comprise something like a unique monstrance that displays the Eucharist at the center. And we get to ponder the Eucharist in the context of 175 of these distinctive, living monstrances.
The collection includes accounts of ways the Lord has worked marvelously through the Eucharist. There is the grandmother who would regularly let the Eucharistic presence of the Lord “bathe” over a chronically ill grandchild only to find out later, after a doctor’s appointment, that she now had to explain to the non-practicing Catholic mother how the child was cured! There are many more accounts of how time with the Lord in Eucharistic adoration has changed one’s ordinary life, like a Dominican nun who explains how all of space and time has been transformed for her after discovering the Real Presence and how she is now like a spider spinning a web of love out from the Eucharistic center point of all reality.
This book can be a tool that helps others share their own love for the Eucharist. Giving the book to a fallen-away Catholic can easily prepare the way for sharing one’s own experience and encounters with the Eucharistic Lord. The book can be an aid to laity in their work of bearing witness to the Eucharistic Mystery and so bring the efforts of the Eucharistic Revival to a broader outreach, to people in one’s own sphere of influence, reaching people that priests may not be able to reach as effectively.
I know of an instance already of someone leaving this book on the kitchen table only to find a curious family member — one who never goes to Eucharistic adoration — leafing through the book and who was still found reading it an hour later. It is a page-turner that can attract those most devoted to the Eucharist and those who have fallen away from the Faith or know nothing of Eucharistic adoration.
For the devout, the book helps confirm that the gentle and subtle invisible workings of the Lord in Eucharistic adoration are actually real as attested by the accounts of others’ experience of the Godhead here in hiding. For the indifferent, it opens up the prospect of the Eucharist, with all its variegated effects and spiritual treasures, as being a gift of God meant for them too — indeed, the gift of God Himself meant for them. For those looking for help in making the most of their Holy Hour, it offers the encouragement and examples of others who are seeking the face of the Lord and finding Him, only to seek Him more.
V. Rev. Ignatius John Schweitzer, O.P., is Prior of St. Catherine of Siena Priory (NYC), adjunct professor, spiritual director, and formator at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Dunwoodie, and the priest promoter of the Eastern Province of Lay Dominicans.
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