Prayer before the Holy Rosary.
dr Wojciech Kosek
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Meditations led by seven people
L, P, W, Z – men; A, B, D – women
(Duration of the meditations with songs: about 57 min)
This translation was published here on 12 Sep 2022.
To see the original Polish text ← click, please!
B Dearest Jesus! With gratitude in our hearts for the beginning of our time of adoration, we now wish to look into Your loving eyes and to listen lovingly to Your voice … You have invited us, the community of the parish of Divine Providence, to an extraordinary meeting with You – a meeting in the Holy Mass and in the adoration that takes place after the Holy Mass, which is a time of grace, a time of sacramental union with You. We received You in Holy Communion during the Eucharist, and now, when our bowels still hold the Eucharistic species, we are all like living, precious chalices placed in the Tabernacle. Tabernacle – is a tent. We are all in the tent of our parish church, the Church of Divine Providence; we are in the tent of meeting with You, Divine Bridegroom… We are here to be with You in the most challenging hours of Your life when You leave the Upper Room of the Last Supper, descend into the brook Cedron, climb the slope of the Mount of Olives, ascend into the Garden, into Gethsemane… Here, in the Garden, begins the poignant time of shedding blood, Your blood… (1:50)
B Song: Garden of Olives – 1st and 2nd stanza (1:56)
P Beloved Jesus! We have come to You because Your love has drawn us… We have come by Your grace to sit like Mary, the sister of Lazarus, at Your feet… to gaze lovingly at You… How we long to listen intently to You, to the beats of Your Heart… Oh, how we long to experience Your love now, in this hour of grace, in the hour of our Eucharistic union. Oh, how we long to experience how Your Heart, second by second, beats out the eternal “I love You!” I love you, Mary; I love you, Martha; I love you, Lazarus; I love you, Anna, Alice, George, Peter… Every one of us hears one’s name now, endowed with Your one and only “I love You!”… (1:13)
P Song: I Want to Give You Everything – 1st and 2nd stanza (1:34)
Oh, Jesus! Mature love, whole love, earnestly desires to reciprocate the gift of love of a loving person. You love us so much…. so much… Your Heart burns with infinite love for everyone and each of us… On the other hand, in response to Your love, we desire to love You more and more intensely, more and more fervently … Oh, how we long to love You now, in this hour of the grace of our Eucharistic communion: to love You through our presence devoted to You, with eyes focused on You, hearts beating for You…, thoughts passionate about You… We wish to focus our attention on You, O Beloved, on Your presence… invisible, but how real and extraordinary, because fully human, physical – Your physical presence, presence here and now, presence with us and for us… (1:22)
A Song: Your heart, Jesus, is burning with love – 1st, 2nd, and 3rd stanza (2:30)
W Most beloved Jesus! We love You with our presence… We have come to the Eucharist and adoration, so that now we may look into Your eyes, so that we may listen to Your voice… so that the awareness of the mutuality of our love becomes a soothing of Your heart and our hearts. We and You desire to saturate each other with this love, which is the fulfillment of the longing for close presence with the Beloved! Our hearts, O Jesus, tell us that You want us to recognize always this time when You come to us and abide in the miracle of Holy Communion and when our love reaches its peak of mutual bestowal. (1:02)
W Song: To Your Heart – 1st, 2nd, 3rd stanza (2:18)
D Dearest Jesus! How often do we run too hurriedly from the Eucharist to our daily duties… how often do we abandon You alone at the feast of love… We fail to arrange the schedule of our days so that only in truly exceptional circumstances do we not have time for You after the Eucharist… Yes, we leave You alone at the feast of love… After all, the feast of love does not end at the end of Mass… No, no! The feast of love continues after the end of the Eucharist; it continues as a time of grace of sacramental union at least a dozen minutes after the end of the Mass – until the Eucharistic species disappear entirely in our bowels… (1:07)
D Song: Jesus, Veiled in the Sacred Host – 1st and 2nd stanza (1:00)
L Extremely poignant is what St. Padre Pio wrote in a letter to his confessor in April 1913, sharing with him a spiritual vision of priests who lived without deep concern for Your mysteries, O Jesus, celebrated at every Mass! This vision was given to the saint to convey to all of us, clergy and laity alike, how much it is necessary to love You, O Jesus, during the celebration of the Eucharist, preparation for it, and thanksgiving after its completion. Saint Padre Pio confessed his mystical experience to the confessor in these words: (0:56)
B “Seeing the worried Jesus was very painful to me, so I asked him why he was suffering so much. There was no answer, but he directed His gaze to those priests. A short time later, Jesus looked away as if terrified and tired of looking at them. He then turned His gaze to me, and to my great horror, I noticed two tears running down His cheeks”. [1] (0:39)
B Song: Your heart, Jesus, is burning with love – 4th, 5th, 6th stanza (2:30)
Z Oh, Jesus, how often we are unaware of the tears streaming down Your cheeks at the end of the Eucharist… Why do You weep? … You weep because the thorny crown of Your invisibility severely wounds You with the thorns of our inattention, resulting from our lack of faith in Your real presence… We are unwilling or unable to focus on You at a time when we have just received You in the miracle of the Holy Communion… Yes, after the Eucharist, we do not see You as You are… We fail to realize that You are the Messiah, the suffering Servant of Yahweh, the Savior going out of the Upper Room towards the Hill of the Skull, the Christ thirsting for the presence of us, Your warm-hearted friends, thirsting for our loving presence as a counterbalance to the hostility of the people condemning You to death. (1:17)
Z Song: O the Silent White Host – 1st and 2nd stanza (2:00)
A We often do not notice the tears running down Your cheeks because of the loneliness granted to You by us… Jesus, Jesus! Although we could sometimes pray longer after the Eucharist, we never pray… We are drawn to something outside the temple… outside the holy time of grace of union with You… outside the holy time of salvation… We do not stay in the temple after Eucharist to abide in prayer… to be with You in the hour of your passing towards death, in the time beginning immediately after the Last Supper in the Upper Room… (0:53)
A Song: I Want to Be Closer to You – 1st and 2nd stanza (1:30)
P Jesus! It is so often after the Eucharist that we waste time instead of concentrating on prayer beside You. It is so hard for us to believe in the seriousness of the words that Pope Pius XII addressed to the Church, and therefore to us, in his encyclical letter Mediator Dei (No. 126), “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…” (1:27)
P Song: The Hidden Jesus – 1st and 2nd stanza (1:46)
D Jesus! How often we grieve You after the Eucharist… Yes, we always grieve You when, instead of praying after receiving Holy Communion, after receiving You as an extraordinary Guest, we abandon You immediately after the Eucharist is over… We run or rush out of the church to love our brothers or sisters after receiving Holy Communion because we see them while we do not see You… We perceive their needs, while we cannot perceive Your needs… We do not take into account that You desire our presence when You set out from the Upper Room of the Mass to meet death… (1:01)
D Song: I Know in Whom I Believe – 1st, 2nd, 3rd stanza (1:50)
W Jesus! We too often run out of the church after the Eucharist to enjoy each other’s presence with persons who have the advantage over You that they are perceptible to our eyes, ears, and other senses… With the eyes of our body, we do not see You received in Holy Communion… You are realistically right next to us, and we do not realize it… Because of our still weak and shaky faith, we do not see sense in abiding in prayer still, after the Eucharist is over and when You are right beside us as the real Man Jesus Christ, as God who became Man… Oh, Jesus, deliver us from this, painful to You, our behavior… (1: 03)
W Song: Be Hail, Living Host – 1st and 2nd stanza (1:20)
B The reflection quoted by the author of the booklet “The Inner Profile of Dehonians. The Main Lines of our Spirituality” in the chapter “After the Holy Mass” is instructive and poignant: “People return from the Holy Mass, talking and laughing: they are convinced that they have seen nothing extraordinary… One might think that they have witnessed something completely ordinary and natural. However, if this event were to happen only once, it would be enough to bring the passionate world to an ecstasy of delight. They return from Golgotha and talk about the weather. Only thanks to this indifference do they not get their senses confused. If they had been told that Holy Mary and St. John, returning from Calvary, were talking about trivial things, they would have said it was impossible. However, they do this. The poverty of their hearts is neither great nor small; it is infinite. The Powers, the Thrones, the Authorities are less powerful than this underdevelopment of their souls”. [2] (1:26)
B Song: Be Hail, Living Host – 3rd and 4th stanza (1:20)
A Also instructive and poignant is what Saint Sister Faustina recorded in her Diary: Today, as I was receiving Holy Communion, I noticed a live Host in the chalice, and the priest gave it to me. When I got back to my place, I asked the Lord why one of the hosts was alive. Was not He present and alive in all of them? The Lord replied,
L “Yes, that is right, I am the same in all of them, but not every soul receives me with such vigorous faith as you do, My daughter, so I am not able to work as much in their souls as I do in your soul.” [3] (0:20)
A Song: Be Hail, Living Host – 5th and 6thstanza (1:20)
Z Beloved Savior! Each of us, people who are baptized in the Catholic Church, profess the faith. However, not everyone is concerned to the same degree with the whole teaching of the Church’s faith. We are pained to hear that even some Catholics do not want to attend the Sunday Mass but still consider themselves believers. They believe that every person has the right to direct his or her life at his or her discretion, without any deeper consideration of the entirety of the Catholic teaching of the faith. We ache for their false beliefs; we pray for the fullness of the light of faith for them… However, do not we partly like them? Are we concerned about the truths God has revealed about the Holy Eucharist to the Church so that we may draw inspiration for our relationship with You, coming in Holy Communion? Unfortunately, we often do not… (1:25)
Z Song: Be Hail, Living Host – 7th and 8th stanza (1:20)
Z Jesus! In this time of grace, we wish to examine the conscience of the depth of our commitment to Eucharistic encounters with You. So I ask myself and answer in the mystery of my heart: am I able to imitate the saints who particularly distinguished themselves by their reverence for You, Jesus, coming in the mystery of the Eucharist? Am I able to take the time to read their works to learn the grounds of their attitude and way of loving You? Am I able to reach for the Catechism of the Catholic Church to learn the truths of the faith regarding the Holy Mass, Holy Communion? Am I able to become so concerned with the learned teachings of the Church and her saints that the love you thirst for, O Jesus, may shine more fully in my life as well? (1:13)
D Song: Here in this Sacrament – 1st and 2nd stanza (1:44)
P Beloved Jesus! It is essential that, by reading and putting into practice what we read from the lives of faith of the saints and the teachings of the Church, we grow in relationship to You, present in the miracle above miracles – the Eucharist. Indeed, Saint John Paul II wrote thus in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor (No. 88d), “It is urgent to rediscover and to set forth once more the authentic reality of the Christian faith, which is not simply a set of propositions to be accepted with intellectual assent. … A word … is not truly received until it passes into action, until it is put into practice.” (0:58)
B Jesus! Following John Paul II, we repeat, “A word … is not truly received until it passes into action, until it is put into practice.” The word of faith, that is, the faith expressed in the words of the Church, must be personally accepted and embodied in deeds by every one of us. It is up to our personal decision to what extent every one of us will take hold of a given truth of faith – take hold of and apply it in relation to You, O Jesus. The saints were concerned to the depths of the words of faith. Here is Saint Sister Faustina recorded in her Diary, “Today after Holy Communion, Jesus told me how much He wants to come to human hearts,
W “I want to unite with human souls; it is my delight to unite with souls. Know this, My daughter, that whenever I come into a human heart in Holy Communion, My arms are full of all manner of graces and I want to give them to the soul, but some souls do not even pay any attention to Me, they leave Me on My own and are busy with other things. Oh, how sad I am that souls have not recognised Love. They treat Me like an inanimate object.” [4](0:41)
A I answered Jesus, “O Treasure of my heart, the only object of my heart, delight of my soul, I want to worship You in my heart, just as You are worshipped on Your throne of eternal glory. My love wants to recompense You [30] at least in part for the coldness of such a large number of souls. O Jesus, here is my heart, a dwelling for You and You alone, to which nothing else has access, You alone may rest in it as in a beautiful garden.” (0:43)
A Song: Here in this Sacrament – 3rd, 4th, 5th stanza (1:44)
L 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 from this day forward the most beautiful and complete response to the desire for love of Your Divine Heart, the desire You entrusted to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque. Behold, You confessed to Saint Margaret one day thus: [5] “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)
D Song: O my Jesus in the Host Hidden – 1st and 2nd stanza (1:50)
L 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)
Z Beloved Jesus! Now, in our prayerful adoration of the “Holy Hour,” we will proceed to abide with You by reciting the sorrowful mysteries of the Holy Rosary. The following words of Pope Francis from his encyclical letter Lumen fidei (No. 44) help us to realize the importance of this Rosary itinerary: “The sacramental character of faith finds its highest expression in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is a precious nourishment for faith: an encounter with Christ truly present in the supreme act of his love, the life-giving gift of himself … In the Eucharist, we learn to see the heights and depths of reality. The bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ, who becomes present in his passover to the Father” (1:11)
B Lord Jesus! Thanks to the teaching of Pope Francis, we realize that in Holy Communion during the Eucharist, we did not receive You as the One who is already in a state of glory in heaven after the Ascension. In Holy Communion, we received You in a state of giving Himself to Death, “The bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ, who becomes present in his passover to the Father…” We have received You as the Messiah, passing through Death to the Resurrection. Now, therefore, with hearts overflowing with love for You, we wish to accompany You on this immensely exhausting, painful path, a path beginning after the Last Supper in the Upper Room and, through the dying in Gethsemane, culminating in the mystery of passing through Death on Golgotha. We walk with You so that it may be lighter for You… Lead us, Jesus, toward the fullness of love! (1:29)