Dr. Wojciech Kosek
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Meditations led by six people:
B, D – women; L, P, W, Z – men.
This translation was published here on 22 Dec 2023.
To see the original Polish text ← click, please!
(Duration of meditations with songs: about 40 min.)
B Song: Fall to Your Knees – 1-2 stanza (0:49)
B Be glorified, dearest Jesus, true God, our Creator and Lord! Be glorified in the mystery of your love for us – your sisters and brothers. Be glorified in the gift of the Blessed Sacrament, which, thanks to the priest’s ministry, we have received with poignancy from Your hands during Mass – the sacrament of Your love. (0:32)
L A moment ago, the Mass was completed; a moment ago, the mystery of the Last Supper was fulfilled, when You, O beloved Jesus, accomplished the transubstantiation of unleavened bread into Your body giving itself up to death on Golgotha, and the transubstantiation of wine into Your Blood, flowing to us sinners from the height of the cross. (0:32)
D How deeply do I believe in the wonderful miracle that is the Holy Mass? Am I aware that I am present with You and the Apostles there, in the Upper Room, as I partake of the Holy Banquet with them during Communion? Am I aware that I am receiving Divine Food? Do I know that I am consuming this Food so that I, along with the Apostles, may be carried from the Upper Room to Golgotha? Do I believe, O Jesus, that this is why I received You so that You could see from the height of the Cross also me, standing right next to the Immaculate Mary – standing at Your feet, which are nailed to the tree of salvation?… (0:56)
D Song: Fall to Your Knees – 3-4 stanza (0:49)
W O beloved Jesus! What is my faith in the Eucharistic miracle which takes place during every Holy Mass? Do I have a habit of consciously meditating on this miracle during the Eucharist? Do I know that the entire Eucharistic community is carried from the 21st century into Your time, into the time of Your saving Pascha? Do I believe? Do I love? Am I able to consciously be there with You? During Transubstantiation and Holy Communion, am I consciously with You and Your Mother Mary on Golgotha in the hours of Your greatest trial and trepidation? Does Your experience – a mortally exhausting experience – make me want to support You with My presence there on the Hill of the Skull? (1:06)
B Jesus and Mary, subject to a mortal test, are You so dear to my heart that this experience is also mine? Does Your suffering move me deeply? Is Your love for me – the love capable of such great sacrifice for me – reflected in my love for You? Jesus! What is my love for You? What is my love for Immaculate Mary? What sort of love is my love? What is my heart, shaped through the Holy Spirit of God by the power of the Divine Blood of my Savior during the grace of Eucharistic union with my God? What is my heart, O Divine Bridegroom! Does my heart love You as Yours desires to be loved by me? Does my heart love You? How is my love? Are You the greatest love of mine, O Jesus? (1:19)
Z Song: Jesus, Veiled in the Sacred Host – 1-2 stanza (1:00)
Z Dearest Lord Jesus! As a community of the parish of Divine Providence, we have come again today for the Holy Mass and adoration. We came here to love You with our conscious presence. We have longed to be in the Upper Room when You are celebrating the Last Supper and then passing the paschal way of the Passion from Earth to Eternity. We worship You, O Beloved Savior, in this poignant passing through the dark valley of death! We praise and thank You for this precious gift of Your love – the Holy Mass and adoration immediately following it. We believe that every Holy Mass is mysteriously the Last Supper, which You celebrated two thousand years ago on the night before the Passion, the night before the passage from Earth to Eternity. (1:16)
D Behold, the Mass – that is, the Last Supper – has come to an end. Behold, You come out in the company of the Apostles from the Cenacle to begin that shedding of Blood in which, thanks to Holy Communion, they have already participated sacramentally. So You come out of the Cenacle of the Last Supper to realize in a natural way for us humans what has already been sacramentally given to the Apostles in Holy Communion: You go to offer the saving sacrifice of Your life. (0:47)
P Dearest Jesus! As the Apostles, we also wish to accompany You on this way of shedding Blood, the way which You are passing after leaving the Upper Room at a time two thousand years distant from the time of our adoration. A moment ago – during the Holy Mass – we were with the Apostles in the Upper Room at the Last Supper; a moment ago, we also partook of Holy Communion with them. So now, having been fed by the Blessed Sacrament, we have the power from You to participate after the Holy Mass in the events that took place after the Last Supper two thousand years ago. (0:59)
P Song: Your Heart, Jesus, is Burning with Love – 1-2 stanza (1:00)
B Dearest Jesus! In the depths of my heart, I ask the question today: how is my faith in this astonishing Eucharistic miracle that consists in Your truly moving me and all of us from the time of our life into Your time, O Jesus, into the time of such poignant salvific events? Do I believe? Do I love? Can I consciously be there with You, with Your Mother Mary, with John the Apostle, with the women…? (0:48)
Z Song: Adoro Te Devote – 1st stanza (0:39)
D Dearest Jesus! Kneeling before Your Divine Majesty, hidden under the whiteness of the Most Holy Host, placed in a golden monstrance, I put questions to my heart today. Do you comprehend, O my heart, what an extraordinary miracle the Mass is? Do you desire, O my heart, during the Transubstantiation and Holy Communion to open my consciousness to the fact that I am then truly with Jesus and Mary on Golgotha? Are you able, O my heart, to lovingly abide there with Jesus and Mary – in the hours of their greatest trial? Do you, O my heart, also gain a deep awareness that, thanks to Holy Communion, not only during the Holy Mass but also after it, the minutes of God’s time of grace – the time of union with Jesus in those events – continue to tick away? (1:00)
W Beloved Jesus! How fervently we desire that the presence of our prayerful community after Mass by Your side – after receiving You in Holy Communion – become today the most beautiful and complete response to the desire for the love of Your Divine Heart, the desire You entrusted to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque. Behold, You confessed to Saint Margaret one day thus: [1] “I thirst with such a terrible thirst to be loved by men in the Blessed Sacrament that this thirst consumes Me. Yet I find no one trying to quench it according to My desire by some return of My love.” (1:03)
B Is my heart capable of loving You, Dearest Jesus? Am I capable of loving You according to Your liking, viz., as You desire? Am I not content to love You in a way only according to the measure of my weakness, doubts, and feelings? Do I know how to love You through the obedience of faith, that is, through submission of reason and heart to the truth about the Eucharist that You communicate to us through the ministry of the Church? Therefore, I beseech You, O beloved Jesus, assist my weak heart with Your divine grace so that it may beat for You today, during this adoration, with poignancy according to Your liking. (1:04)
B Song: Adoro Te Devote – 2-4 stanza (1:57)
Z In our prayer practice after the Holy Mass, O Lord, we wish to imitate St. John Paul II, about whom Bishop Albin Małysiak said, “Another manifestation of piety. There is the beatification of Blessed Karolina Kózkówna in Tarnów. The day was a bit so heavy – it was a little steamy. The service lasted more than two hours, err, excuse me, it lasted more than three hours. At the beatification, the Litany to All Saints is recited. Cardinal Wojtyła, even though he had a kneeler next to him, knelt on two knees the entire time during this Litany to All Saints. Well, he just gave such a physical effort. The service ended, and everyone, being a little tired, ran away to some point where one could stop. However, I stayed there for a while. At one moment, there was already such emptiness on the field altar. I opened the door to the sacristy, and there was no one there; but there was Wojtyła on a kneeler, who was still praying. He did not have enough of those three hours of prayer. Here is Wojtyła; here is his piety.” [2] (1:40)
D Dearest Jesus! Is my heart capable of loving You as St. Pope John Paul II did? Am I capable of loving You according to Your liking, that is, as You Yourself desire? Am I not content to love You only according to the measure of my weakness, doubts, and feelings? Do I know how to love You through the obedience of faith, that is, through submission of reason and heart to the truth that You communicate to us about the Eucharist through the ministry of the Church? Therefore, I beseech You, O beloved Jesus, assist my weak heart with Your divine grace so that it may beat for You today, during this adoration, with poignancy according to Your pleasure. (1:07)
D Song: Adoro Te Devote – 5-7 stanza (1:57)
P Lord Jesus! St. John Paul II is a model for us of loving You, the Savior coming in Holy Communion. Our Holy Compatriot, who was miraculously saved from death on the anniversary of the first apparition of Your Mother at Fatima (13 May 1917), understood his Marian devotion not only as entrusting himself to Her care but also as imitating Mary in her love for You, Jesus. In the encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia, No. 55, he wrote, “There is a profound analogy between the Fiat which Mary said in reply to the angel, and the Amen which every believer says when receiving the body of the Lord. Mary was asked to believe that the One whom she conceived ‘through the Holy Spirit’ was ‘the Son of God’ (Lk 1:30-35). In continuity with the Virgin’s faith, in the Eucharistic mystery we are asked to believe that the same Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Mary, becomes present in his full humanity and divinity under the signs of bread and wine. … And is not the enraptured gaze of Mary as she contemplated the face of the newborn Christ and cradled him in her arms that unparalleled model of love which should inspire us every time we receive Eucharistic communion?”
B Encouraged by St. John Paul II, we desire, O beloved Jesus, to imitate Mary in her love for You. Therefore, we desire to contemplate Your Face with Her after each Eucharist. It means that we desire to consciously be with You, physically present with us, just as You were physically present with Mary and Joseph after the birth. We desire to be with You and for You after every Holy Mass because You are then corporeally present with us, just as You were corporeally present with them after the birth in the grotto in Bethlehem. In our love for You, we desire to become like Mary. She always gazed in awe at You when she had the grace of being in Your corporeal presence. (1:08)
L Song: Be Hail, Living Host – 1-4 stanza (2:40)
L The “Fatima Pope,” as St. John Paul II was called, while standing in prayer after Holy Mass, fulfilled with his life of faith what was enormously encouraged by the first “Fatima Pope,” Pius XII – the one who recognized the truthfulness of the Fatima apparitions of Mary and who in 1942 was the first to consecrate the world to her Immaculate Heart, and in 1947 wrote in his encyclical Mediator Dei, No. 126, thus [3] : (0:38)
D “Why then, Venerable Brethren, should we not approve of those who, when they receive holy communion, remain on in closest familiarity with their divine Redeemer even after the congregation has been officially dismissed, and that not only for the consolation of conversing with Him but also to render Him due thanks and praise and especially to ask help to defend their souls against anything that may lessen the efficacy of the sacrament and to do everything in their power to cooperate with the action of Christ who is so intimately present. We exhort them to do so…” (1:01)
W Then Pius XII added, [4] “The author of that golden book The Imitation of Christ certainly speaks in accordance with the letter and the spirit of the liturgy, when he gives the following advice to the person who approaches the altar, ‘Remain on in secret and take delight in your God; for He is yours whom the whole world cannot take away from you.’ [Book IV, c. 12.] Therefore, let us all enter into closest union with Christ and strive to lose ourselves, as it were, in His most holy soul and so be united to Him that we may have a share in those acts with which He adores the Blessed Trinity with a homage that is most acceptable.” (0:58)
W Song: Be Hail, Living Host – 5-8 stanza (2:40)
B Beloved Jesus! From the bottom of our hearts, we thank You for the luminous examples of those of our brothers and sisters who, by word and life, encourage us to reflect deeply on our attitude toward You, coming physically in Holy Communion. We believe that we should renew our Eucharistic faith in a pastoral year dedicated to reviving faith in You, O Jesus. Therefore, we once again realize the importance of the teaching given by the Second Vatican Council about the need to see the difference between the different means of Your presence with us. (0:54)
Z This Council teaches that although You are present among us in many ways, Your Eucharistic manner of presence with us is entirely different and absolutely incomparable to all other ways of Your presence. So we believe that although You are indeed in our sick and needy, You are in a completely different way in the Eucharist. We believe that although You are present in the liturgical assembly, You are there in a completely different way from the moment of consecration. We believe that although You are truly present in our souls in a state of grace before receiving Holy Communion, You are present with each of us in an absolutely perfect way after receiving You in Holy Communion. (1:10)
D We believe, Divine Bridegroom, that You are with each of us in an absolutely unique way – physical, bodily – from the moment we receive Holy Communion to the moment we digest sacramental species. It is a time of especially close intimacy, of spousal love, of which the physical union of the spouses in their mutual, fruitful love is scarcely a reflection. Why then, O Beloved, do we not usually treasure this gift of close intimacy with You at a time when You are indeed close? Help us, we ask, to see anew the time of Eucharistic spousal love… (0:58)
P We beseech You, O Beloved Jesus, to help us to see anew the time of Eucharistic spousal love… Help us to love You in such a way that our love for one another will be fruitful. Grant us a new insight into this Divine mystery that You have contained in such an inconspicuous-looking white Host and in the Holy Mass, in which we sometimes participate without heart involvement. Infuse our hearts with the kind of love that You Yourself longingly expect from us… (0:42)
P Song: Let us Love the Lord – 1-2 stanza (1:20)