Memorial of Saint Faustina Kowalska, Virgin
Faustina, a Gift of God to our time
“And you, Faustina, a gift of God to our time, a gift from the land of Poland to the whole Church, obtain for us an awareness of the depth of divine mercy; help us to have a living experience of it and to bear witness to it among our brothers and sisters. May your message of light and hope spread throughout the world, spurring sinners to conversion, calming rivalries and hatred and opening individuals and nations to the practice of brotherhood. Today, fixing our gaze with you on the face of the risen Christ, let us make our own your prayer of trusting abandonment and say with firm hope: Christ Jesus, I trust in you! Jezu, ufam Tobie!” (Saint John Paul II, Homily, April 30, 2000)
Saint Faustina is ”a gift from God for our times”, who reminded the biblical truth about merciful love of God for every human being and calls to proclaim it to the world through the testimony of life, deed, word and prayer.
She is Apostle of Divine Mercy, Prophet of Our Times, Great Mystic, Mistress of Spiritual Life – these are the epithets usually appended to the name of Sister Faustina Kowalska of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. She is one of the Church’s most popular and widely known saints and the greatest mystics in the history of the Church.
Sister Faustina was born on August 25, 1905, in Głogowiec, Poland to Marianna and Stanisław Kowalski as the third of ten children. Two days later she was baptized with the name Helena in the parish church of Świnice Warckie. At the age of nine, she made her first Holy Communion. She attended elementary school for merely three years and then she went to work as a housekeeper in various well-to-do families in Aleksandrów and Łódź. From the age of seven, she had felt the calling for religious vocation, but her parents would not give her permission to enter the convent. Impelled by the vision of the Suffering Christ, in July 1924 she left for Warsaw to find a Congregation. For another year she worked as a housekeeper to save some money for a modest monastic dowry. On August 01, 1925, she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in Warsaw.
She lived in the Congregation for thirteen years, staying in many houses, the longest time she spent in Kraków, Płock and Vilnius; working as a cook, shop assistant in the bakery shop, gardener, and portress. She suffered from tuberculosis of the lungs and alimentary system and that is why for over 8 months she stayed at the hospital in Kraków – Prądnik. Her sufferings caused by tuberculosis, she offered as a voluntary sacrifice for sinners and as an Apostle of Divine Mercy. She also experienced many extraordinary graces such as: apparitions, ecstasies, the gift of bilocation, hidden stigmata, reading into human souls, the mystical betrothal and nuptials.
Sister Faustina’s principal task was to pass on to the Church and the world the Message of Mercy, a recapitulation of the Biblical truth of God’s Merciful Love for every human being, and to call each one of us to entrust our lives to Him and to actively love our neighbor. Jesus not only revealed the depth of His Mercy to St. Faustina, but also gave her new forms of devotions: the image inscribed Jesus, I trust in You, the Feast of Divine Mercy, the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, and the Prayer in the Hour of His Death on the Cross, the Hour of Mercy. To each of these forms of devotions, as well as to the propagation of the message of Mercy, Jesus attached great promises, on condition that we care about the attitude of trust in God that is to fulfill His will and show mercy to our neighbors.
Sister Faustina died in Krakow on October 5, 1938, at the age of thirty–three. Out of her charism and mystical experience grew the Apostolic Movement of the Divine Mercy which continues her mission, proclaiming the message of Mercy to the world through the testimony of life, deed, words and prayer. On April 18, 1993, the Saint John Paul II raised her to the glory of the altars and on April 30, 2000, numbered her among the saints of the Church. Her relics are in the Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Kraków-Łagiewniki.
Saint John Paul II wrote that in the age of totalitarianisms Sister Faustina became the ambassador of the message that the only power strong enough to counteract their evil is the truth of God’s Mercy. He called her Diary “a Gospel of Mercy written from a 20th-century perspective”, which has helped people to survive the extremely painful experiences of these times. Pope Benedict XVI has said, “the message of Mercy as the Divine Power, as God putting a check on all the world’s evil, is indeed the chief message of our times.”
Diary: Divine Mercy in My Soul
The Diary is one of the gems of mystical literature. Saint Faustina Kowalska wrote it in Vilnius and Cracow in 1934-1938 as Jesus had commanded her to do so directly. Her confessors, Father Michael Sopoćko and Father Joseph Andrasz S.J. had also ordered her to write it and the superiors of the Congregation had given her their consent. The earliest notes that have remained were written in July 1934. It is known that Sister Faustina burnt the first ones because when Fr. Michael Sopoćko was not in Vilnius she yielded into the persuasion of an alleged angel who was Satan. Later Fr. Michael Sopoćko ordered her to reconstruct what had been destroyed. Therefore, the chronology in the present Diary is distorted, especially in the first notebook: the author intersperses current events and experiences with the description of those that happened before.
Sister Faustina wrote all the notes in secret when she was not carrying out her monastic duties. She also wrote them in the hospital, where she had more time and, at Fr. Michael Sopocko’s request, she underlined all Jesus’ words with a pencil. “Although I am feeling weak and my nature is clamoring for rest, she admitted honestly, I feel the inspiration of grace telling me to take hold of myself and write, write for the comfort of souls, whom I love so much and with whom I will share all eternity. And I desire eternal life for them so ardently that that is why I use all my free moments, no matter how short, for writing in the way that Jesus wishes of me” (Diary 1471). The last notes were taken in June 1938, so Sister Faustina ceased writing the Diary three months before her death. She wrote six notebooks altogether, which were published along with a small notebook entitled: “My preparation for Holy Communion.”
In the Diary Sister Faustina described her spiritual life, which was especially deep, reaching the summit of union with God in the mystical betrothal. She depicted how deeply she came to know the mystery of the Divine Mercy and how she contemplated it in her daily life. She also wrote about the struggle against the weaknesses of human nature and difficulties pertaining to the prophetic mission. Above all, the Diary contains the message of God’s merciful love for man, which Sister Faustina was to pass on to the Church and the world.
Prayer to obtain grace through
the intercession of Saint Faustina
O Jesus, You inspired Saint Faustina with profound veneration for Your boundless Mercy. Grant me through her intercession, if it be Your holy will, the grace …for which I fervently pray. My sins render me unworthy of Your Mercy but be mindful of Saint Faustina’s spirit of sacrifice and self-denial, and reward her virtue by granting the petition which, with childlike confidence, I present to You through her intercession.
Our Father…, Hail Mary…, Glory…
Saint Faustina, pray for us.
Until Tomorrow
fr. george