[On my episcopal tasks]. This is a continuation of yesterday’s afternoon meditation. There is a need for undertaking tasks and putting them in order, to organise them according to their merit. Each of these tasks includes many smaller tasks, more detailed and specific (e.g. the attitude to brother priests, to laypeople, to individual departments of the Curia, TP, etc.). The bishop’s work has to be concrete, pastoral; it cannot remain only general, theoretical (unproductive talk, even though one undoubtedly needs councils, conferences and meetings).
Above all, the entire style of episcopal activity has to be governed by the following premises:
1. ‘My Father is working still, and I am working’ ( ).10
2. ‘Apart from me you can do nothing’ (Christ).11
3. ‘Do whatever he tells you’ (Mary).12
It is about allowing God–Father, Christ the Lord and His Mother to work through me at all times. Hence the entire activity of the bishop is contained in prayer and devotion (sacrifice).
Rosary (III); (Beginning to write the Declaration on Christian education); Finally:
Concluding meditation intra devotionem Eucharist. [during the Eucharistic service]: Rosary, litanies etc. This meditation, on the one hand, brought together the fruits of yesterday’s reflections, and, on the other hand, expanded on the Marian theme. The Mother of God remains in a special relationship to the ‘mystery of the Father’. She receives into Herself His participation in the world, in the human being – grace, to the fullest among all created beings. Hence the first words spoken to Mary: ‘full of grace’.13 She also adds to this participation, to grace, a human shape. In this mission of Hers, She constantly becomes and still is the Mother of the Church. But a reflection on these mysteries has to be preceded by a meditation on the Son of God according to the words ‘He who has seen me has seen the Father’ (J).14
Reading the Holy Scripture (2 Chronicles); Anticipated Matins (Saturday office of the Blessed Virgin Mary)
Reading the Directory for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops
Praying the penitential psalms in accordance with the intention for the day, which was a penitential day (cf. Holy Mass); Compline
Until now: reading the journal Nasza Przeszłość [Our Past], ‘Wspomnienie o kard. A. Sapieże’ [Remembering Cardinal A. Sapieha] by P. Żółtowski
11 August
Saturday office of the Blessed Virgin Mary; Getting up at about 6.00 a.m. and first prayers in accordance with the intention for the day
Shorter meditation on the readings from the breviary before the Holy Mass (from Prophet Malachi: The day of the Lord – and from Lumen gentium VIII: Mary as the figure of the Church)
Then follows the Holy Mass (offered for my brothers and sons in episcopacy and in priesthood, and also for those who resigned from priesthood); Afterwards: thanksgiving (a thanksgiving prayer for the Father General of the Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit during the Holy Mass); and Lauds
After breakfast: Rosary (I); Petitions and prayers to the Holy Spirit; Then, writing the Declaration on Christian education (cont.). After some time:
Morning meditation (longer): De mysterio Filii [On the mystery of the Son]: The Lord Jesus said, ‘he who has seen me has seen the Father’, and at another time, ‘I and the Father are one’.15 These words are the main theme of the meditation. The Son is, so to speak, the ‘visibility’ of the Father; the Son is not only the Father’s invisible image, which is the consubstantial Word, but also His ‘visualisation’ in the history of humankind, which He enters by becoming Man. God–Man: The God of history simultaneously circumscribes the entire history of salvation and centres it around Himself. In this utmost closeness – to man, to humankind, to history – Jesus–Son-of-God acts, above all, as consubstantial with the Father (Consubstantialis). At the same time, He prepares the ground for further such work in the Church. This divine action coming from His Person enters deeply into human history from Bethlehem to Calvary. Above all, it enters into the event of the cross, the atoning sacrifice, which has a redeeming power.
The entire canvas of human history, life and death, does not overshadow Son–God. This meditation powerfully revealed to me His reality, in which the Father became (and is still becoming) particularly visible. The mystery of the Son–Word’s birth is unfathomable. The analogy of human birth ‘through the body’ fails here. The Son is eternally consubstantial – and, as the Son, is eternally being born by the Father. There is no dependence here, the birth is an expression of the Son’s consubstantiality with the Father – as well as with the Holy Spirit in the unity of the Godhead.
The Way of the Cross: new thoughts, new associations with the words of the Holy Scripture – based on the previous meditations
Reading at lunch: Maria nasz wzór [Mary: Our Role Model], and in particular ‘Zbiór dokumentów katedry i diecezji krakowskiej’ [Collected Documents on the Cathedral and Diocese of Kraków] (St. Kuraś)16
Daytime prayer (Terce)
At around 3.00 p.m., reading in the chapel: ‘Die Christuserfahrung des Ignatius von Loyola’ [Ignatius Loyola’s Experience of Christ] by Robert Stalder (journal Communio)17
Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament; Rosary (II); Daytime prayers (Sext, None)
Then reading a passage from the ‘Declaration in defence of the Catholic doctrine of the Church against certain errors of the present day’ by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (Mysterium Ecclesiae [The mystery of the Church])
Meditatio postmeridiana circa aliquos aspectus personales (uti adhuc: methodus procedendi in oratione fundetur). Praecipue commendantur [illegible] successivi cum sacerdotibus [Afternoon meditation about certain personal questions (like previously: let the method of proceeding be based on prayer). Particularly advisable are […] with priests] (!)
Rosary (III); First Vespers for Sunday
Evening meditation: Recapitulatio diei totius [Summing up the whole day]: mysterium [mystery] of the Son, the ‘visibility’ of God, His ‘historicity’ is connected to the Mother, Mary, in a special way. She is the first one, in a way, to determine this visibility and historicity. And this is why our entire relation with the visible God, with the Son – and through Him with the invisible Father – takes place through Mary. In any case, the relation cannot exclude Her, and it is well known that it is thanks to Her that this relation is the most complete and most potent.
At the same time, one thought kept returning to me in the meditation: how Mary, experiencing God’s ‘visibility’ and ‘historicity’ every day in Her Son–Man, simultaneously had to experience His divine transcendence. Amazing and unfathomable life.
(Meditation throughout the Eucharistic service and Rosary); Anticipated Matins for Sunday
Reading the ‘Directory for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops’
Litany of the Saints and others; Compline
Finally, reading the book Polacy w Australii [i Oceanii] 1790–1940 by L. Paszkowski (in the context of my recent participation
