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ST. MARIA FAUSTINA KOWALSKA:
 Sister
Mary Faustina, an apostle of the Divine Mercy, belongs today to the
group of the most popular and well-known saints of the Church.
Through her the Lord Jesus communicates to the world the great
message of God's mercy and reveals the pattern of Christian
perfection based on trust in God and on the attitude of mercy toward
one's neighbors.
She was born on August 25, 1905 in Gogowiec in
Poland of a poor and religious family of peasants, the third of ten
children. She was baptized with the name Helena in the parish Church
of Awinice Warckie. From a very tender age she stood out because of
her love of prayer, work, obedience, and also her sensitivity to the
poor. At the age of nine she made her first Holy Communion living
this moment very profoundly in her awareness of the presence of the
Divine Guest within her soul. She attended school for three years.
At the age of sixteen she left home and went to work as a
housekeeper in Aleksandrow and Ostrwek in order to find the means of
supporting herself and of helping her parents.
At the age of seven she had already felt the
first stirrings of a religious vocation. After finishing school, she
wanted to enter the convent but her parents would not give her
permission. Called during a vision of the Suffering Christ, on
August 1, 1925 she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Our
Lady of Mercy and took the name Sister Mary Faustina. She lived in
the Congregation for thirteen years and lived in several religious
houses. She spent time at Krakow, Polack and Vilnius, where she
worked as a cook, gardener and porter.
Externally nothing revealed her rich mystical
interior life. She zealously performed her tasks and faithfully
observed the rule of religious life. She was recollected and at the
same time very natural, serene and full of kindness and
disinterested love for her neighbor. Although her life was
apparently insignificant, monotonous and dull, she hid within
herself an extraordinary union with God.
It is the mystery of the Mercy of God which she
contemplated in the word of God as well as in the everyday
activities of her life that forms the basis of her spirituality. The
process of contemplating and getting to know the mystery of God's
mercy helped develop within Sr. Mary Faustina the attitude of
child-like trust in God as well as mercy toward the neighbors. O
my Jesus, each of Your saints reflects one of Your virtues; I desire
to reflect Your compassionate heart, full of mercy; I want to
glorify it. Let Your mercy, O Jesus, be impressed upon my heart and
soul like a seal, and this will be my badge in this and the future
life (Diary 1242). Sister Faustina was a faithful daughter of
the Church which she loved like a Mother and a Mystic Body of Jesus
Christ. Conscious of her role in the Church, she cooperated with
God's mercy in the task of saving lost souls. At the specific
request of and following the example of the Lord Jesus, she made a
sacrifice of her own life for this very goal. In her spiritual life
she also distinguished herself with a love of the Eucharist and a
deep devotion to the Mother of Mercy.
The years she had spent at the convent were
filled with extraordinary gifts, such as: revelations, visions,
hidden stigmata, participation in the Passion of the Lord, the gift
of bilocation, the reading of human souls, the gift of prophecy, or
the rare gift of mystical engagement and marriage. The living
relationship with God, the Blessed Mother, the Angels, the Saints
and with the entire supernatural world - was as equally real
for her as was the world she perceived with her senses. In spite of
being so richly endowed with extraordinary graces, Sr. Mary Faustina
knew that they do not in fact constitute sanctity. In her Diary she
wrote: Neither graces, nor revelations, nor raptures, nor gifts
granted to a soul make it perfect, but rather the intimate union of
the soul with God. These gifts are merely ornaments of the soul, but
constitute neither its essence nor its perfection. My sanctity and
perfection consist in the close union of my will with the will of
God (Diary 1107).
The Lord Jesus chose Sr. Mary Faustina as the
Apostle and "Secretary" of His Mercy, so that she could
tell the world about His great message. In the Old Covenant - He
said to her - I sent prophets wielding thunderbolts to My people.
Today I am sending you with My mercy to the people of the whole
world. I do not want to punish aching mankind, but I desire to heal
it, pressing it to My Merciful Heart (Diary 1588).
The mission of Sister Mary Faustina consists in 3
tasks:
- Reminding the world of the truth of our
faith revealed in the Holy Scripture about the merciful love of God
toward every human being.
- Entreating God's mercy for the whole world
and particularly for sinners, among others through the practice of
new forms of devotion to the Divine Mercy presented by the Lord
Jesus, such as: the veneration of the image of the Divine Mercy with
the inscription: Jesus, I Trust in You, the feast of the
Divine Mercy celebrated on the first Sunday after Easter, chaplet to
the Divine Mercy and prayer at the Hour of Mercy (3 p.m.). The Lord
Jesus attached great promises to the above forms of devotion,
provided one entrusted one's life to God and practiced active love
of one's neighbor.
- The third task in Sr. Mary Faustina's
mission consists in initiating the apostolic movement of the Divine
Mercy which undertakes the task of proclaiming and entreating God's
mercy for the world and strives for Christian perfection, following
the precepts laid down by the Blessed Sr. Mary Faustina. The
precepts in question require the faithful to display an attitude of
child-like trust in God which expresses itself in fulfilling His
will, as well as in the attitude of mercy toward one's neighbors.
Today, this movement within the Church involves millions of people
throughout the world; it comprises religious congregations, lay
institutes, religious, brotherhoods, associations, various
communities of apostles of the Divine Mercy, as well as individual
people who take up the tasks which the Lord Jesus communicated to
them through Sr. Mary Faustina.
The mission of the Blessed Sr. Mary Faustina was
recorded in her Diary which she kept at the specific request
of the Lord Jesus and her confessors. In it, she recorded faithfully
all of the Lord Jesus' wishes and also described the encounters
between her soul and Him. Secretary of My most profound mystery -
the Lord Jesus said toSr. Faustina - know that your task is
to write down everything that I make known to you about My mercy,
for the benefit of those who by reading these things will be
comforted in their souls and will have the courage to approach Me (Diary
1693). In an extraordinary way, Sr. Mary Faustina's work sheds light
on the mystery of the Divine Mercy. It delights not only the simple
and uneducated people, but also scholars who look upon it as an
additional source of theo-logical research. The Diary has
been translated into many languages, among others, English, German,
Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Arabic, Russian, Hungarian,
Czech and Slovak.
Sister Mary Faustina, consumed by tuberculosis
and by innumerable sufferings which she accepted as a voluntary
sacrifice for sinners, died in Krakow at the age of just thirty
three on October 5, 1938 with a reputation for spiritual maturity
and a mystical union with God. The reputation of the holiness of her
life grew as did the cult to the Divine Mercy and the graces she
obtained from God through her intercession. In the years 1965-67,
the investigative process into her life and heroic virtues was
undertaken in Krakow and in the year 1968, the beatification process
was initiated in the Western Church. The latter came to an end
in December 1992. On April 18, 1993 John Paul II, the Western
Patriach and Bishop of Rome, raised Sister Faustina to the glory of
the altars. Sr. Mary Faustina's remains rest at the Sanctuary of the
Divine Mercy in Krakow-Aagiewniki.
*From the diary of Sr. Maria
Faustina Kowalska
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