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 Nov 2023.
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(Duration of meditations with songs: about 23 min.)
The First Mystery.
The agony of Lord Jesus in Gethsemane.
D Song: Garden of Olives – 1st stanza (0:40)
B Beloved Jesus! We gaze lovingly at You, hidden behind the whiteness of the Most Holy Host. We see with the eyes of faith that You are now kneeling in the Garden of Gethsemane. We see the bloody sweat, a sign of Your immense inner tension… a sign of the struggles taking place in the depths of Your Heart. We hear the appeal You direct from this Garden over the centuries to each of us, ‘Do not succumb to the temptation to give in to your weakness, do not be content with the false humility of considering yourselves powerless against the power of temptation. Overcome the temptations! Overcome them with the power I now give you by our Eucharistic union!’ Dearest Jesus! Your victorious struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane brings to mind another but sadly losing struggle that took place at the dawn of human history in the Garden of Eden. The author of Genesis (3:1-6) recorded: (1:24)
P Gen 3:1–6: Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the animals that the Lord God had made. The serpent asked the woman, “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?” The woman answered the serpent: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman: “You certainly will not die! No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is bad.” The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. (1:24)
D Beloved Jesus! We gaze lovingly at You, who are abiding with extraordinary determination in prayer in the situation of trial in the Garden of Gethsemane. We contemplate Your call to us, “Persevere, do not yield to the power of temptation! Follow Me, not Eve and Adam. Believe what St. Paul wrote under My inspiration in the First Epistle to the Corinthians (10:13), that ‘God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength; but with the trial, he will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to bear it.” (0:54).
The Second Mystery.
The scourging of Lord Jesus.
W Song: Be Hail, Living Host – 1st stanza (1:20)
W Beloved Jesus! We gaze with love at You, hidden behind the whiteness of the Most Holy Host. We see with the eyes of faith how determined You are to persevere in this terribly difficult situation of suffering… to persevere out of love for us… You persevere because You want to teach us that each of us can persevere in the same way… Yes! Yes! We have the power from You to endure the most severe scourgings, preeminently situations of severe temptation… We have this power if only we are consumed by a fervent desire to remain faithful to the Father’s commandments, to the loving will of our beloved Father – the will that He has declared through the moral law, inscribed in the commandments… (1:04)
B Beloved Jesus! Temptations urge us to break God’s law. Therefore, St. John Paul II wrote in the encyclical Veritatis Splendor (No. 103) [1] how important it is for everybody to conquer his heart for a strong hope of victory over temptations. He emphasized the need for us to notice the Divine source of power that the sacraments are for us as long as we receive them devoutly. St. John Paul II wrote, “Man always has before him the spiritual horizon of hope, thanks to the help of divine grace and with the cooperation of human freedom. It is in the saving Cross of Jesus, in the gift of the Holy Spirit, in the Sacraments which flow forth from the pierced side of the Redeemer (cf. John 19:34), that believers find the grace and the strength always to keep God’s holy law, even amid the gravest of hardships.”(1:22)
L Beloved Jesus! We give thanks from the bottom of our hearts for the grace of participating in the Holy Eucharist and adoration after it! We believe that by giving our time to love You, we do not lose it but gain so much… Behold, You now make us persons free from the influence of evil, persons like You. Be glorified, O Lord, for the gift of the Holy Eucharist… (0:37)
The Third Mystery.
The crowning of the Lord Jesus with thorns.
Z Song: I Know in Whom I Believe – 1st stanza (1:36)
D Beloved Jesus! We gaze lovingly at You, hidden behind the whiteness of the Most Holy Host. We see with the eyes of faith with what determination You now persist in the heartbreakingly difficult situation of being crowned with thorns… You persist out of love for us… You wish to make us aware that we, too, are called to such determination and sometimes heroic suffering when we are tempted to evil. We know that as people prone to sin, we must not only humbly recognize ourselves as incapable of fighting temptations based on our own strength, but simultaneously, we must respect that God has obligated us to gain victories over temptations based on cooperation with Him! (1:00)
Z Lord Jesus! We firmly believe that to make this possible, we must be filled with the power of God, which You grant to us if only we lovingly meet with You in the sacraments. St. John Paul II wrote about it this way, “As Saint Andrew of Crete observes, the law itself ‘was enlivened by grace and made to serve it in a harmonious and fruitful combination. Each element preserved its characteristics without change or confusion. In a divine manner, he turned what could be burdensome and tyrannical into what is easy to bear and a source of freedom’”(0:57)
B Beloved Jesus! In this hour of grace of Eucharistic union with You, we desire to propitiate You for all those situations when we refused You to abide in prayer after receiving You in Holy Communion. We realize that when You desired to have us close to You, physically close to You, we drifted away from You. We know that when we did not unite with You in prayer after receiving You in Holy Communion, we caused You great pain – pain of the Heart disappointed in love… At the same time, we hurt ourselves – we denied ourselves from drawing from the source of strength that is You, being for us physically, in the flesh, in Holy Communion… (1:07)
The Fourth Mystery.
The Way of the Cross of the Lord Jesus.
L Song: You go Through the Ages – 1st stanza (1:16)
D Beloved Jesus! We gaze lovingly at You, hidden behind the whiteness of the Most Holy Host. We see with the eyes of faith with what determination You now persist in the heartbreakingly difficult situation of carrying the cross… You persist out of love for us… You want each of us, participants in today’s adoration, to remember the words with which You give deep meaning to our bearing the burden of temptation: (0:39)
P “Then he said to all, ‘If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself?’” (Luke 9:23–25) (0:33)
B O Jesus! We believe that we, on our own, do not have the strength to endure to the end to bear the burden of struggling against the forces of temptation. That is why we today abide after Holy Communion in adoration, in sacramental union with You, huddling around the same beam of the Cross that You, the Mighty One, carry to the very top. We believe that our special closeness makes us people similar to You… (0:38)
W Yes, through the power of the Sacrament of Communion, we become more and more like You as sisters and brothers of the Conqueror of Hell! O Beloved, stir in us the desire to love You often with prayer during the Eucharistic time of grace, that is, during the time that lasts from the moment of receiving You in Holy Communion not only until the end of the Eucharist but also sometime after that. Amen. (0:38)
The Fifth Mystery.
The Death of the Lord Jesus on the Cross.
L Song: I Greet You – 1st stanza (0:49)
L Beloved Jesus! We gaze lovingly at You, hidden behind the whiteness of the Most Holy Host. We see with the eyes of faith with what determination You now remain in the heartbreakingly difficult situation of dying on the cross… You remain out of love for the Father and us… You want us to stand at Your feet, which are now nailed to the beam of the cross… to stand close to the Immaculate Mary, Your and our Mother, so that, drawing from Her example, we may be able to love You with our presence here on Calvary. (0:46)
D We believe, O Beloved Savior, that now, as we are in the Eucharistic union with You and adore You, who are hanging on the tree of shame, You pour down upon us the streams of saving graces, filling us with the power to overcome sin, to overcome temptation. We believe that now in us, too, this longed-for transformation is taking place, about which St. Paul wrote in the Epistle to the Galatians (5:24), “Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires.” Yes, we believe that You, O Crucified Love, now, in this hour of the grace of Eucharistic union, bring us out of the power of the lusts of the flesh and give us the power to keep moral norms. We believe so with St. John Paul II, who recorded the following words in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor (No. 103): (1:20)
Z “It would be a very serious error to conclude… that the Church’s teaching is essentially only an ‘ideal’ which must then be adapted, proportioned, graduated to the so-called concrete possibilities of man, according to a ‘balancing of the goods in question’. But what are the ‘concrete possibilities of man’? And of which man are we speaking? Of man dominated by lust or of man redeemed by Christ? This is what is at stake: the reality of Christ’s redemption. Christ has redeemed us! This means that he has given us the possibility of realizing the entire truth of our being; he has set our freedom free from the domination of concupiscence.” (1:10)
B Beloved Savior! We adore You, hung on a tree between heaven and earth! We abide lovingly by You and believe that Your saving Blood now frees us from the lusts we have not yet had the strength to overcome. Be glorified, O Beloved our Deliverer, liberating us from submission to the forces of darkness. O Jesus, dying on the tree of the cross for love of me, I love You! Amen. (0:43)
The Completion of the Holy Rosary.
P Beloved Jesus! Behold, we have come with You to the end of the way You passed from the Upper Room to Golgotha two thousand years ago. We believe that the power of the Blessed Sacrament, which we have eaten during the Holy Mass, has genuinely moved us back to the time of Your life, to the Upper Room. (0:28)
D Today, once again in our life, we have received from You the grace to participate in that celebration because every Holy Mass is always that Last Supper You celebrated on the night before Your way to death. In our adoration after the Holy Mass today, we also received the grace of accompanying You on the path You passed from the Cenacle to the Hill of the Skull. (0:36)
W So now here we are, on the Hill of the Skull, with Mary filled with pain, when You, our beloved Savior, are descending from the height of the Cross into the Abyss, into the land of the dead, to come out from there after three days on the morning of Resurrection. We believe, O Jesus descending into the Abyss, that in this hour of grace, You descend also into the Abyss of our souls. With profound devotion, we will now abide in prayerful silence until the end of this adoration in order to open ourselves to Your voice – the voice of the Good Shepherd (cf. John 10:1-18; Heb 13:20) (0:52)