As I have acknowledged previously, Father Ignatius John Schweitzer, O.P gave birth to Godhead Here in Hiding Whom I Do Adore – Lay Dominicans Reflect on Eucharistic Adoration two year ago, when he invited the Lay Dominicans of the Province of St. Joseph to share their thoughts on the Eucharist and Eucharistic Adoration. He did this not knowing how many would respond or in what genre they would write.


As a result of Father’s invitation, we now have a symphony of diverse reflections – from the simple to the sublime. Each reflection is a gem in its own right. Each one an invitation to a greater belief in, and reverence for, God’s Presence among us.

Try this gem on for size:

                                                            In the Presence of the Lord
 “Come out of the marketplace, put down your vegetable knives, the laundry, your coming and going. Let your hands drop from the work of the world. Bring me your heart. Leave everything else.”
Imagine Jesus entering a village, and the excited residents calling from house to house, “He is here! Come! He has arrived!” A bucket drops back into the well, dough is covered with a bowl for later, the loom goes quiet, a plough tilts to one side in the furrow. Breathless villagers rush to sit at the feet of the rabbi named Jesus. The room is warm, and the energy is electric around Him. They listen, some with questions beating in their chests like birds in a cage. Jesus answers their unuttered questions as He speaks. Some bring sadness like baskets of dust, some bring the charred remains of long-held anger, some are as full of worry as a tall jar of olives. A secretly wrapped wound, a coughing child, a pain that is old and never relents - people bring all of these things to Jesus. He heals, transforms, steadies, and uplifts with both His words and His gentle, penetrating gaze, and everyone there feels this grace of His touch, even if He does not touch them physically.

When He was born, Jesus was brought gold, myrrh, frankincense. People were still coming to Him with full hands, but whether it was a gift of kings, or a tear-streaked face and an apron full of dusty figs, He accepts everything. Jesus leans forward to stress a word, raise a palm, tilts His head back and laughs, and the people know He is not only a teacher, but a healer, a master, and a joyful friend. Like dawn spreading pink and gold across the sky, they begin to realize who He is: the anointed one, long awaited, the Messiah.

When He left the village, they cried, already missing Him, and most returned to their work thinking about His words, but even more, remembering how He made them feel. They would never be the same, and they knew it.

The world is still a marketplace, a busy village, not that different from the way it was two thousand years ago. And still, God, is calling us to put down some of the busyness, and to sit with Him.
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The voice of God is not a cinematic production, at least not for me. It doesn’t rock the sky with fireworks. Instead, it comes quietly the way snow arrives silently in the night, the beauty of its arrival lost if we are not awake to see it. In the stillness and silence, we can feel the presence of God. Our time in prayer is like taking new yarn and dipping it into a vat of dye. The yarn emerges tinted with the dye bath just as we emerge from prayer with hearts saturated with love.

But there is another step in this metaphor because colored yarn is not too useful left as it is. When we receive the Eucharist, we are bringing everything that we are, what we have, into the presence of God. Like the people who once sat at Jesus’ feet, we bring Him our fears, our worries, maybe our thanksgiving, a heart full of joy. Or maybe we offer our hearts, like bundles of yarn, freshly dyed, and we say, like St. Ignatius, "Take, Lord, receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, my whole will, all that I have and all that I possess. You gave it all to me, Lord; I give it all back to you. Do with it as you will, according to your good pleasure. Give me your love and your grace; for with this I have all that I need.” And God receives the humble yarn of who we are. But the thing is, He doesn’t just take it. He changes it and creates with it. The Master Weaver makes something new, with his own hands, from who we thought we were, into what He calls us to be.

In our modern world change is constant, and even feels accelerated. We may be eager to change, but we often can fear change. We can be inspired by it or resent it. Do you remember being a child and going through the car wash, sitting in the backseat while the soapy rags dragged over the top and sides of the car? Inside, the car was dry and untouched. Similarly, we can drive through life’s car wash, everything swirling in rotary brushes and beaters, while inside, our hearts remain the same. Wouldn’t we want God to clean our hearts, sparkling bright and to change us? To fulfill our Christian vocation as it was designed by God: to be conformed to the image of his Son?

As the wool cannot resist the dye, we too are changed in the presence of Jesus on the altar. Day after day, we sit in His presence, maybe silently, with silence being the sacred corridor of prayer in the heart. We bring the fibers of the day, and the skeins of our longing, and God as Weaver takes them all, and changes them into something more beautiful, because it is in His design. Perhaps we think of the many things in our lives that need changing, but the main work is the transformation of the heart as it is gradually repaired, healed, and maybe even turned from stone to flesh, all in His presence.

Isn’t God everywhere? Can’t we meet Him while matching socks and folding laundry? Yes, because God is in everything like the tiny drop of water in the center of a kernel of corn that makes it pop. But some things are felt and understood best when we stand in their presence. The world is mostly covered in ocean, and we can spin a globe and tap our fingers across the blue paisley of the oceans. Yet if you dive past the breakers and float on your back off the Jersey shore and feel the salt in your eyes and how it lifts your body under the great expanse of sky, then you will know the ocean. The idea of the ocean pales in comparison to the experience of the ocean.

As Catholics we exist in the realm of the miraculous. It is a miracle that Jesus was born in a simple and humble way, yet in Him, the pulse and heartbeat of God was manifest in the world. It is a miracle that the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist is available to all of us in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and in Adoration. The pangs of loss felt by those ancient villagers who loved Jesus but had to say goodbye has been resolved by His outpouring of Himself on the altar. We don’t have to say goodbye. We can say hello, daily, and we can both welcome Him and be welcomed by Him. Some people live lives of work and activity punctuated by prayer. But we are called to live lives of prayer punctuated by work and activity. Prolonged prayer keeps us united with God. Through all our activities, a habitual state of simple prayer and union with God varies in intensity at different times of the day but creates a rhythm in our lives. When we take that time in Adoration into the world, every hour carries the sacred texture of Holy Hour.

If we somehow received news that Jesus was in town, that He had arrived, can you imagine the heart-bursting joy that we would feel? We would rush to wherever He was, dropping everything, and we would crowd into whatever space held Him. We would sit and pay attention to every word that came from His mouth, and long to be close enough to brush up against His clothing. When we sit or kneel in Adoration before His body in the Eucharist, we are really in His presence, every bit as much as the villagers who abandoned everything to fly to where He taught. And just as they came away changed after being in His presence, we, too, cannot help but come away changed.

Put down the kettle, the garden hose, pick up the baby, and run. He waits for you. Come out of the marketplace, put down your vegetable knives, the laundry, you’re coming and going. Let your hands drop from the work of the world. Bring Me your heart. Leave everything else.

harvestingthefruitsofcontemplation.blogspot.com/2025/09/eucharistic-reflection-in-presence-of.html

​I am blessed to be a Lay Dominican. However, the ideas expressed on this blog are my own and do not represent the endorsement of or position of the Order of Preachers as a whole. I am neither responsible for, nor endorse content (e.g. banner ads, pop-up ads, etc.) that may be linked to this blog.

How will these words impact the way you live your Faith?
 
“If I am truly grateful for the fact that our Lord is my God and my Savior, Who shed His blood to the last drop for me and would have done it for me alone, I must react, when I see Him attacked, insulted, derided, blasphemed and His Church persecuted. That is the logical consequence of adoration.

"What good is a Holy Hour, filled with good feelings and emotion, if, as I come out and witness an offence to God, I do not take a stand? What is the sincerity of that love I pledged to Our Lord, if I remain indifferent when I see Him attacked? If my adoration is sincere, I must be ready to fight for His cause to the last breath.

If we consider that our Lord Jesus Christ is the head of the Mystical Body, which is the Catholic Church, and that the Church on earth is called the Church Militant; if we consider that it has been the Church's lot to be attacked, contested, denied, betrayed and persecuted through the ages, I must be prepared to defend her. Before those who try to make me ashamed of her, I must hold my head high and have enough knowledge of a holy doctrine to silence them.”

​harvestingthefruitsofcontemplation.blogspot.com/2025/06/eucharistic-reflection-what-good-is.html

​I am blessed to be a Lay Dominican. However, the ideas expressed on this blog are my own and do not represent the endorsement of or position of the Order of Preachers as a whole. I am neither responsible for, nor endorse content (e.g. banner ads, pop-up ads, etc.) that may be linked to this blog.

"… I will treasure more than anything else the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It is often said that it is the Mass that matters. This means that Mass is the most important thing in the world. It is very true. But I really think that sanctifying grace matters most of all. Still, where do I get that from if not through the Sacrifice of the Cross which is continued in the Sacrifice of the Mass. I am afraid.  I do not think as highly of Holy Mass as I should. And this reminds me of a story I have often read about the Sacred linen in Greenland. It was in the sixteenth century. There had been a religious persecution in the island and all priests had been killed or driven out, so that for fifty years there was no Mass at all in Greenland.
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After fifty years, there were still some scattered Catholics left. They used to meet every year for a Christmas celebration in a lonely house almost covered by snow. On one such night they all gathered together in the house. First, they said some prayers. Then an old man arose, went to a bureau, and took from it what used to be a white cloth, like a big, square napkin. Now it was yellow with age and tattered. It was a corporal, that linen cloth on which, during Holy Mass, rest the Body and Blood of Christ. The old man said: ‘Brethren, fifty years ago Mass was last said in this country. I served that last Mass. Let us kneel down and thank God for this precious relic, on which rested the Body and Blood of Jesus. And let us pray that God may send us priests to offer the Holy Sacrifice in our midst again.’

Tears streamed from all eyes as they knelt to pray. And all around me there are now so many churches and so many Masses are being offered. I do not think I value enough the chances that I have to assist at Holy Mass. Where there is a persecution and hearing Mass is forbidden under pain of torture or death, good Catholics nevertheless go to Mass, even if it is in caves under the ground.

Those good people in Greenland knelt down and thanked God for that precious Sacred linen. How happy and how devout they would have been if they could have bowed down before Jesus Himself in the Blessed Sacrament! And I am often so careless and thoughtless in my genuflections and in my way of kneeling or sitting or standing in the presence of my Eucharistic Savior. And it seems that the more I have to do around the Blessed Sacrament, the more like a pagan I become."
 
(The Way to God - Father Winfrid Herbst, S.D.S.)

PRAYER TO BE PRESERVED FROM SUDDEN DEATH
MOST AMIABLE JESUS "I humbly implore Thee by Thy ignominious Scourging, The Crowning with Thorns, Thy Holy Cross, and by all Thy Goodness, not to permit me to pass out of this world without having received Thy most holy Sacraments." -Prayer of St. Vincent Ferrer

PRAYER OF ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA​
"Eternal Father, all things are possible for You. Although You created us without our assistance, You will not save us unless we help. Therefore, I pray You re-create their wills so that they wish for what they do not wish for: I ask this of Your infinite mercy. You have created us out of nothing. Now that we exist have mercy on us. Re-make the vessel which You created in Your own image and likeness. Bring them back to Your grace through the grace and blood of You Son, the beloved Jesus Christ."

​https://harvestingthefruitsofcontemplation.blogspot.com/2024/11/eucharistic-reflection-treasure-holy.html

I am blessed to be a Lay Dominican. However, the ideas expressed on this blog are my own and do not represent the endorsement of or position of the Order of Preachers as a whole. I am neither responsible for, nor endorse content (e.g. banner ads, pop-up ads, etc.) that may be linked to this blog.