On October 5, the church celebrates the Memorial of St. Mary Faustina Kowalska, a poor, uneducated nun, who became a mystic, a Promoter of the Divine Mercy Devotion and a saint.
On April 30, 2000, Pope John Paul II canonized St. Faustina saying this was “the happiest day of my life.” Faustina was granted the title "Secretary of Mercy" by the Holy See in the Jubilee Year of 2000
In his homily the Pope said: "Today my joy is truly great in presenting the life and witness of Sr. Faustina Kowalska to the whole Church as a gift of God for our time. By divine Providence, the life of this humble daughter of Poland was completely linked with the history of the 20th century, the century we have just left behind. In fact, it was between the First and Second World Wars that Christ entrusted his message of mercy to her. Those who remember, who were witnesses and participants in the events of those years and the horrible sufferings they caused for millions of people, know well how necessary was the message of mercy,”
It was also on this day, the Sunday after Easter, that Pope John Paul II instituted the Feast of Divine Mercy, which Jesus had asked for in his messages to Sr. Faustina.
Maria Faustyna Kowalska, born Helena Kowalska is also known as Maria Faustyna Kowalska of the Blessed Sacrament, a Polish Catholic religious sister and mystic. Faustyna, popularly spelled "Faustina", had apparitions of Jesus Christ which inspired the Catholic devotion to the Divine Mercy. She is sometimes called the "secretary" of Divine Mercy
At the age of 20 years, she joined
a convent in Warsaw. She was later transferred to Płock and then to Vilnius, where she met Father Michał Sopoćko, who was to be her confessor and spiritual director, and who supported her devotion to the Divine Mercy. With this priest's help, Kowalska commissioned an artist to paint the first Divine Mercy image, based on her vision of Jesus. Father Sopoćko celebrated Mass in the presence of this painting on the Second Sunday of Easter or as established by Pope John Paul II), Divine Mercy Sunday.
Pope St. John Paul II wrote:
“It is truly marvelous how her devotion to the merciful Jesus is spreading in our contemporary world and gaining so many human hearts! This is doubtlessly a sign of the times — a sign of our twentieth century. The balance of this century, which is now ending, in addition to the advances which have often surpassed those of preceding eras, presents a deep restlessness and fear of the future. Where, if not in the Divine Mercy, can the world find refuge and the light of hope? Believers understand that perfectly,”
Faustina was born Helena Kowalska on August 25, 1905 to a poor but devout Polish family in 1905. At the age of 20, with very little education, and having been rejected from several other convents because of her poverty and lack of education, Helen entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. There, she took the name Sr. Faustina and spent time in convents in both Poland and Lithuania.
In 1924, at the age of 18 and a half, Kowalska went with her sister Natalia to a dance in a park in Łódź. Kowalska said that at the dance, she had a vision of a suffering Jesus, who she believed asked her: 'How long shall I put up with you and how long will you keep putting Me off?" She then went to the Łódź Cathedral, where, as she later said, Jesus instructed her to depart for Warsaw immediately and to enter a convent.She took a train for Warsaw, some 85 miles away, without asking her parents' permission and despite the fact that she knew nobody in Warsaw. The only belongings she took were the dress that she was wearing.
In 1925, Kowalska worked as a housemaid to save the money she needed, making deposits at the convent throughout the year and was finally accepted, as the Mother Superior had promised. On 30 April 1926, at the age of 20 years, she was clothed in the habit and received the religious name Maria Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament. In April 1928, having completed the novitiate, she took her first religious vows as a nun, with her parents attending the rite.
From February to April 1929, she was assigned to the convent in Wilno, then in Poland, now known as Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, where she served as a cook. Although her first assignment to Vilnius was short, she returned there later and met the priest Michael Sopoćko, who supported her mission. A year after her first return from Vilnius, in May 1930, she was transferred to the convent in Płock, Poland, for almost two years.
Not knowing how to paint, Faustina approached some other nuns at the convent in Płock for help, but she received no assistance. Three years later, after her assignment to Vilnius, the first artistic rendering of the image was produced.
In the same message about the Divine Mercy image, as Faustina also wrote in her diary (Notebook I, item 49), Jesus told her that he wanted the Divine Mercy image to be "solemnly blessed on the first Sunday after Easter Sunday; that Sunday is to be the Feast of Mercy."
In November 1932, Faustina returned to Warsaw to prepare to take her final vows as a nun, by which she would become in perpetuity a sister of Our Lady of Mercy. The ceremony took place on 1 May 1933, in Łagiewniki.
In May 1933, Faustina was transferred to Vilnius to work as the gardener; her tasks included growing vegetables. She remained in Vilnius for about three years, until March 1936. The convent in Vilnius then had only 18 sisters and was housed in a few scattered small houses, rather than a large building
Shortly after arriving in Vilnius, Faustina met priest Michael Sopoćko, the newly appointed confessor to the nuns. He was also a professor of pastoral theology at Stefan Batory University, now called Vilnius University.
When Faustina went for the first time to this priest for confession, she told him that she had been conversing with Jesus, who had a plan for her. After some time, Sopoćko insisted on a complete psychiatric evaluation of Faustina by Helena Maciejewska, a psychiatrist and a physician associated with the convent. Faustina passed the required tests and was declared of sound mind.
Sopoćko then began to have confidence in Faustina and supported her efforts. Faustina told Sopoćko about the Divine Mercy image, and in January 1934, Sopoćko introduced her to the artist Eugene Kazimierowski, who was also a professor at the university.
By June 1934, Kazimierowski had finished painting the image, based on the direction of Kowalska and Sopoćko, the only Divine Mercy painting that Faustina saw.
The first Mass during which the Divine Mercy image was displayed occurred on 28 April 1935, the second Sunday of Easter, and was attended by Faustina. It was also the celebration of the end of the Jubilee of the Redemption by Pope Pius XI.
On 13 and 14 September 1935, while still in Vilnius, Faustina wrote of two visions about the Chaplet of Divine Mercy in her diary (Notebook I, Items 474 to 476). According to her, the chaplet prayers and structure were dictated to her directly by Jesus Christ, who granted several promises to its recitation. Kowalska wrote that the purpose for the chaplet's prayers for mercy is threefold: to obtain mercy, to trust in Christ's mercy, and to show mercy to others.
Divine Mercy
the Divine Mercy is a devotion to Jesus Christ associated with the reported apparitions of Jesus to Faustina Kowalska.
The venerated image under this title refers to what Faustina's diary describes as "God's loving mercy" towards all people, especially for sinners.
Miracles Attributed to the Divine Mercy Devotion
It is not possible to lost all of the miracles connected to the Divine Mercy and the promise Jesus made to mankind in regards to the image and the chaplet. To list all, would fill many books by themselves. Many more are often personal and people do not report them. See for example Health With Grace blog about Miracles of the Divine Mercy
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