What did Pope Benedict XVI teach and preach when he was out of the limelight, behind closed doors, among friends? In his late years, after the noise of the papacy had quieted down, how did he understand Scripture—Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Christian life? When he had the room to be vulnerable, what did he say about the heart of his own spirituality?

In The Lord Holds Us by the Hand, we experience a different side of Joseph Ratzinger. This collection of private homilies—all delivered off the public record in small chapels, during his years as pope and pope emeritus—reveals not a “detached exegete”, as his longtime secretary Archbishop Gänswein notes, but a Christian in “lively participation” with God. In these meditations, never before published in English, “exegesis, theology, catechesis, and spirituality intertwine and join together, leading the listener to enter in depth into the heart of the mystery of Christ.”

The Lord Holds Us by the Hand touches on many of the complex truths of the Catholic faith, from the Immaculate Conception to the mystery of our salvation on the Cross, yet it distills them into simple, personal, human terms, refined by a lifetime of prayer and experience. This book would make a wonderful gift for priests and deacons, as well as for anyone devoted or indebted to Pope Benedict XVI.