Dr. Wojciech Kosek
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Meditations led by three people:
A, M – women; W – man.
This translation was published here on 10 Jan 2024.
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(Duration of meditations: about 39 min.)
Full text of St. Faustina’s Diary at www.saint-faustina.org ← click, please!
1. The coming of God to Adam and Eve in Eden vs. the coming of Jesus in Communion
M At the beginning of our preparation to participate in the Mass, we will draw from the source of pure water, beating in the Garden of Eden. In the second part of the meditation, we will draw from the wisdom of the Church. (0:22)
W After showing the drama of Adam and Eve’s temptation by the serpent, the Book of Genesis depicts an extraordinary scene: Behold, the Creator of the first people, He Himself, is coming to the Garden of Eden to meet them! It is important to note in this description: a. the identification of the time of day when this unusual visitation of people by God took place, b. the attitude of Adam and Eve towards the unusual Visitor coming to them. (0:44)
A Let us listen to a passage from Genesis (Gen 3:8-12): When they heard the sound of the Lord God moving about in the garden at the breezy time of the day, the man and his wife hid themselves from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 The Lord God then called to the man and asked him, “Where are you?” 10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden; but I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid myself.” 11 Then he asked, “Who told you that you were naked? You have eaten, then, from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat!” 12 The man replied, “The woman whom you put here with me – she gave me fruit from the tree, so I ate it.” (1:07)
M Jewish translators of the Hebrew Bible into Greek in the 3rd century BCE rendered the words “at the breezy time of the day” with an expression “in the evening,” probably taking into account the fact that wind in the Holy Land occurs in the evening, at the twilight of the day. (0:28)
W The Lord God, therefore, came in the evening. He came at a time when the day was slowly retreating to the west, and man has time to rest after work, meet with others, and talk with them. Therefore, God came at a convenient time to meet with his especially beloved creatures, whom he created in his divine image and likeness. (0:37)
A It is worth knowing that in later times, much distant from the day described in the Book of Genesis, God obliged the Israelites to offer Him sacrifices twice every day in the Jerusalem temple, and the time when they were to do it was morning and just the evening, i.e., the breezy time of the day. (0:33)
M Therefore, God comes to Adam and Eve at some time particularly favored by Him when He is in the habit of strolling through the Garden of Eden, resting, looking at all the beauty He has created… However, God not only wants to look – He desires to meet with persons, with those who can rationally converse with Him. He desires to be in the company of people – He desires to be with them. (0:43)
W The coming God was not welcomed with joy by Adam and his wife, Eve. On the contrary, they wanted to avoid meeting Him, tried to hide from God, and pretended not to hear His footsteps. Why? The Book of Genesis explains that it was the sin they committed at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that became the cause of their turning away from Him. This sin, in all its dramatic depth, consists primarily of a change in their thinking, adopting a new view of God’s prohibition and, above all, adopting a new view of God Himself. (1:01)
A Changed by the serpent’s persuasion, the thinking goes like this: God forbade eating the fruit because he feared for His distinguished position in the world; therefore, God does not have pure intentions. (0:19)
M Moreover, in the new thinking, it is the serpent who is credible – it is he who opened people’s eyes to the “truth” about God. (0:12)
W It is worth asking: Why do we consider today the situation described in the Book of Genesis? Isn’t it too far from this with which our lives are filled? (0:17)
A However, no! The common point between that scene and our everyday life is God’s constant coming to each of us. During Holy Communion, Jesus Christ Himself, the Creator, the Incarnate Son of God, comes to visit me, comes at a chosen time, at an appropriate time – when He wants to be with me, at a time that I have also chosen. He comes to say my name with love and hear His name spoken from the depths of my heart: Jesus… (0:52)
M Song: O Unspeakable Happiness Shone Forth – 1-2 stanza (1:50)
W Jesus comes because He loves me. He comes because He desires to be with me… Will I notice His desire? Is He sufficiently significant to me that I will want to stay with Him, listen to His voice when He most tenderly wants to tell my name?… (0:28)
2. The depth of the Mass and the prayer time after its end
A Let us now consider the wonderful depth of Jesus’ gift of the Mass and the prayer time after it. (0:12)
M Just as the beauty and power of moonlight surpasses the beauty and power of starlight, so the time for praying the rosary surpasses the time for the Stations of the Cross, Bitter Lamentations, praying the Chaplet of Divine Mercy at the hour of mercy, or praying the vigil with Jesus in the Garden every Thursday night. (0:32)
W Moreover, just as the sun, with its beauty and power, surpasses the beauty and power of moonlight, so does the time of the Holy Mass and the prayer after it surpasses the beauty and power of the time of the Holy Rosary. (0:21)
A What is the difference, and on what basis can such claims be made? The Mass is the greatest miracle, the greatest gift of Almighty God, and the Holy Rosary is the gift of Mary, the greatest personal masterpiece of God. (0:27)
M Let us reflect on the Holy Mass’s extraordinary and often barely noticed properties. It is a gift of God Himself, Jesus Christ, who, on the night before His Passion, instituted it as a supernatural time machine, which carries us back in time as far as two thousand years and makes us participants in the Last Supper. It is remarkable that during every Holy Mass, even the most modestly celebrated, we participate in the miracle of being carried back in time! (0:42)
W As the Holy Mass begins, all those gathered around the validly ordained priest are taken into the Upper Room for the Last Supper in the blink of an eye. Our senses persuade us that we are still in our church and see at the altar that the priest we know, dressed in the liturgical vestments in force in the 21st century, is celebrating the Mass according to the liturgical regulations in force now. However, there is a different situation than our senses tell us: the main celebrant here is Someone else – Jesus, whom we do not see with our bodily sight and who is not so much at the altar in our church as at the table of the Last Supper. So we do not see Jesus, the High Priest, who is the only one worthy to offer His Body and Blood to the Father as a sacrifice for sinners. We do not see Him. However, He sees us perfectly – we are very close to Him in His time. (1:28)
A Being at Mass, we are at the Last Supper. Let us then consider: What happened at the Last Supper? In what do we participate when we attend Mass as the Last Supper? (0:22)
M Behold, Jesus then celebrated the Passover, the liturgy of which is composed of four parts. In the third part of the Passover, Jesus performed the Transubstantiation of bread and wine into His Body and Blood, which He offered on Golgotha. Jesus fed with this sacrificial Body and Blood the Apostles, and with them also us, people from the other historical time. Yes, Jesus fed not only the Apostles but also us, the people who arrived from the XXI century, i.e., from the other historical time. (0:46)
W Therein lies the extraordinary, supernatural property of the Holy Mass as a time machine – it truly takes us back to the time of the Last Supper and thus gives us to eat some of the same Bread and Wine. We eat from the same supernatural Bread and Wine, not just from Bread and Wine similar to that Bread and Wine! This miracle of carrying us over backward in time is given to us by God in every Eucharist! (0:42)
A Shouldn’t that amaze and fascinate us? Think about it! How unimaginably powerful God is, and at the same time, how unimaginably humble, since He performs such a miracle under the cover of such humble-looking liturgical signs… How hidden He is in the mystery of His gifts since what the Eucharist is is still being discovered by successive generations of believers… (0:41)
M What is astonishing is that Jesus did not reveal the entire depth of the Eucharist to the Apostles at once. On the contrary, it is available to those who lovingly desire to participate in it more and more deeply. (0:24)
W The Holy Father John Paul II wrote about this in his Encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia (No. 2b): “Did the Apostles who took part in the Last Supper understand the meaning of the words spoken by Christ? Perhaps not. Those words would only be fully clear at the end of the Triduum sacrum, the time from Thursday evening to Sunday morning. Those days embrace the mysterium paschale; they also embrace the mysterium eucharisticum.” (0:56)
A So we are at the Last Supper with Jesus, eating the same Bread with the Apostles and drinking from the same Chalice. This is unusual… In every Mass, we are carried back in time to the hour of the Last Supper! However, the extraordinary does not end there! For, what does it mean to eat this Body and Blood of the Lord? (0:36)
M The Church gives us the certainty of faith that the Apostles, eating this Food, were taken from the Upper Room slightly forward in time: to Golgotha, where Jesus is in a state of dying on the cross, giving His life for the sinners. For, at the moment of the Transubstantiation in the Upper Room, Jesus launched the time machine forward. At that exact moment, the Apostles stood genuinely at His feet nailed to the tree of the cross; the Apostles stood indeed next to Mary and the other women on Golgotha. We note that although Jesus’ Death had not yet occurred in history measured by the clock time and although Jesus and the Apostles were still in the Upper Room according to the earthly time, thanks to the miracle of the Transfiguration, they were already in the Upper Room participating in this future Event! (1:14)
W Thus, we, too, eating with the Apostles the same Food, are being carried forward in time – from the Upper Room to Golgotha – and stand there as witnesses of Jesus’ Death, standing right next to Immaculate Mary and the other women! During each Transubstantiation and Holy Communion, we stand as true witnesses of Jesus’ Death and the Sorrows of Jesus’ Blessed Mother. Through this, we have the opportunity to express our sympathy to Jesus and Mary, to shed tears of sorrow for our sins – the cause of this drama! Being truly right next to Jesus, the dying Savior, we have the opportunity to make a firm decision to correct ourselves. We also have the opportunity to beg for Jesus’ saving help and Mary’s maternal help so we may be faithful to these resolutions. What is more – we receive an immediate answer to this request: Jesus’ Blood flows down from the tree of the Cross on us as well, standing, after all, not in imagination, but in real, bodily terms at that Cross. (1:23)
A Although during the Holy Mass, we do not perceive with our senses any sound or sign from Golgotha, God makes us witnesses of the Lord’s Death, witnesses the more credible, the deeper and the more seriously we enter into the reality of the Mystery which we are given to participate over the centuries. On the other hand, St. Padre Pio was additionally granted by God’s will an extraordinary grace to participate with his whole being in the Event of Golgotha. When he celebrated Mass, he participated in the moment of Transubstantiation physically in his body in the pain of the Savior dying on the cross. One should know, however, that such grace is not necessary for salvation. On the contrary, it is Jesus’ desire that we participate in His Death without any additional aid, thanks to our firm belief in the truth of the Catholic Church’s teaching that every Mass is the making present of the Sacrifice that the Son of God made on the cross at Golgotha. (1:37)
M The third part of the Holy Mass takes the Apostles and us from the Upper Room to Golgotha, but at the same time, leaves us all still at Jesus, celebrating the Last Supper. So we are both in the Upper Room and on Golgotha because the Apostles with Jesus are both in the Upper Room and on Golgotha. (0:26)
W We know that the wonders contained in the Holy Mass do not end there: the third part of the Eucharist, that is, the Transubstantiation and Holy Communion, is followed by the fourth part: the glorification of Jesus. Through the singing of hymns or silence, we worship Jesus as the conqueror of hell, Satan, and death, as the One who receives from the Father right now the reward of eternal life – for Himself as a man and for each of us. During the time of adoration after Holy Communion, Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into the hearts of the Apostles and the hearts of the participants of all Holy Masses. (0:46)
A The fourth part of the Holy Mass thus takes us from the Upper Room of the Last Supper to the Upper Room of the Resurrection and the Upper Room of Descent of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, behold again, we must conclude that we are still participants of the Last Supper before Your way to Death, although at the same time, the time machine takes us with the Apostles and with Mary and with all the participants of all Masses into the events of the not-too-distant future in relation to the time of the Last Supper: into the time of Jesus’ glory. (0:36).
Summary of considerations
Z The Holy Mass makes us, first of all, participants of the Last Supper, within which it makes the Apostles and us participants in Jesus’ Sacrifice on Golgotha (which takes place during Transubstantiation and Holy Communion), and then Jesus’ Resurrection, Ascension and Descent of the Holy Spirit (which takes place during glorification after Holy Communion). The Holy Mass brings us perfectly into Jesus’ earthly time, into His hour of salvation. (0:39)
B In order to discover the unique character of the Mass, Jesus’ gift to the Church, we must realize that the Holy Rosary, the gift of Mary, Jesus’ Mother, cannot carry us to the time of Jesus’ life. The Rosary only brings the events to memory. Mary gave it to the Church so that its particular mysteries would be brought into the minds of those who recite them and stimulate them to gratitude for the Event that a particular mystery represents. (0:48)
A Similarly, celebrating the Way of the Cross or Bitter Lamentations does not make us truly present with Jesus in His events two thousand years ago – they only remind us of them as something immensely important but already irretrievably past. While all of these forms of devotion bear some resemblance to the Holy Mass as a means of uniting us with Jesus, passing the time of Passion and the time of Glory, we must remember that, in light of the Catholic Church’s teachings, only the Holy Mass fully merits the term time machine as a means for truly real participation in those salvific events which, from the perspective of earthly time, have already passed irretrievably. (0:54)
M Having in mind the understanding of the Holy Mass as a time machine, taking us back in time to the Upper Room of the Last Supper, we can now more deeply understand the importance of adoration prayer, undertaken immediately after the end of the Holy Mass, whether individually or in community, which the Church strongly encourages.
W We remember, that Jesus left the Upper Room after the Last Supper and went with the disciples to the Garden of Olives, and so began to realize those Events in which He had already given them sacramental participation – carrying them through a time machine forward in time. The Apostles, therefore, although they had already participated in these Events at the time of the Last Supper, they could participate in them again after the Last Supper – they could be with Jesus in the most challenging hours of His life! (1:07) (0:49)
A We know that the Apostles did not live up to this opportunity – they slept in Gethsemane when Jesus was in agony; they slept, although He asked them to keep a prayer vigil with Him. To make up for that abandonment of Jesus, the Holy Father John Paul II held an hour-long prayer vigil every Thursday. As a result of private revelations, religious orders have also been established for a similar holy practice. We must remember, however, that through sacramental union with Jesus, coming in Holy Communion, one can do so even more deeply, precisely after the Holy Mass. Holy Father John Paul II gave a model for the prayer of union with Jesus after the Holy Mass and encouraged us to do so. (1:13)
M We know that not only through sleep during Jesus’ agony in Gethsemane, the Apostles did not live up to the opportunity to accompany Him from the Upper Room to Death. They were also missing at the climactic moment at Golgotha. Only one of the Apostles, the youngest, John, stood at Jesus’ pierced feet near Mary and several women named Mary. He is the model for us of perseverance and depth of union in love with the Master, he, the beloved disciple of the Lord Jesus… (1:35)
A To make reparation to Jesus for the absence of almost all the Apostles by His side on Golgotha, the Church today recites the Divine Mercy chaplet at three o’clock. The Church makes it thanks to St. Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament. We move then in spirit to Golgotha to be with Jesus in those most difficult moments of His life. However, here again, with the seriousness that comes from obedience to the infallible teaching of the Church, we must conclude that this spiritual standing on Golgotha is of incomparably less value to You than that undertaken through conscious participation in the Mass and the prayer immediately following it. (0:57)
A Jesus’ desire that we, through prayer at the Hour of Mercy, support Him in that hour of His dying two thousand years ago is, therefore, a discreetly expressed request for conscious participation in the Mass and the following prayer. After all, only prayerful abiding after the Eucharist, in union with Jesus received in Body and Blood, offers the possibility of a truly identical standing on Golgotha, as was given to St. John, who was the only one of the participants in the Last Supper to abide with Jesus on His way. Herein lies the miracle of the Eucharist, the miracle of union with Jesus in His Body and Blood. It is because the sacraments are the most essential means of dispensing grace and responding to God’s love. (1:16)
M John Paul II wrote as follows in the Encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia (No. 25): “The worship of the Eucharist outside of the Mass is of inestimable value for the life of the Church. This worship is strictly linked to the celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. The presence of Christ under the sacred species reserved after Mass – a presence which lasts as long as the species of bread and of wine remain – derives from the celebration of the sacrifice and is directed towards communion, both sacramental and spiritual. It is the responsibility of Pastors to encourage, also by their personal witness, the practice of Eucharistic adoration, and exposition of the Blessed Sacrament in particular, as well as prayer of adoration before Christ present under the Eucharistic species.” (1:16)
W Let us remember that the consumption of Holy Communion cannot be understood as an almost immediate end to Your human, bodily presence with us. On the contrary, Your sojourn with us as God Incarnate, as Man hidden under the species of the Sacred Host, continues for some time. As we heard just now, the Church proclaims: “The presence of Christ under the sacred species reserved after Mass – a presence which lasts as long as the species of bread and of wine remain” – that is, until their whole destruction in the process of digestion. Precisely because each of us continues to conceal the most holy species of the Blessed Sacrament in our bowels after the Holy Mass, we are intimately united with You, O Christ, who, after the completion of the Last Supper as a man, goes out from the Upper Room to the Garden of Gethsemane and onward, onward… to Golgotha… (1:36)
W Let us remember that the consumption of Holy Communion does not immediately end the duration of Jesus as a person under the species of the Sacred Host. On the contrary, this presence continues for some time. As we heard a moment ago, “The presence of Christ under the sacred species reserved after Mass … lasts as long as the species of bread and of wine remain” – lasts until they are completely destroyed in digestion. Precisely because each of us continues to store the holiest species of the Sacrament in his bowels after the Mass, we are closely united with Christ in this moment of His life as a man when He goes out of the Upper Room after the completion of the Last Supper into the Garden of Gethsemane. (1:12)
A This absolutely pinnacle form of Jesus’ presence – as a corporeally, physically present person with me, though undiscoverable by my senses, allows me to physically go with Jesus on the way to the Garden of Olives and on up to the summit of Golgotha, go in the historical time of Jesus’ life to accompany Jesus realistically, entirely realistically. Admittedly, the sacramental species will eventually cease to exist during prolonged prayer after the Mass; however, such close union with Jesus continues until the end of this prayer, which I began after Communion. Therefore, it is worth planning my day to have as much time as possible after the Eucharist to accompany prayerfully Jesus on His exhausting way for my salvation. (1:14)
M At the end of our reflections, let us listen to the words from St. Faustina’s Diary of the Blessed Sacrament: “Often during Mass, I see the Lord in my soul, I feel His presence transfixing me. I feel His Divine glance, I say a lot to Him without speaking any words, I know what His Divine Heart wants, and I always do what He prefers. I love Him to the point of insanity, and I feel I am loved by God. At such times, when in the depth of my soul I meet God, I am so happy – I cannot put it into words.” (1:00)