Santa Faustina Kowalska

Helena Kowalska was born on 25 August 1905 in the village of Głogowiec, Poland, the third of ten children of the peasant couple Stanisław and Marianna Kowalski. Baptized Elena in the parish church of Świnice Warckie, she showed from childhood a love of prayer, diligence, obedience, and a keen sensitivity to human poverty. At nine she received First Holy Communion and became deeply aware of the Divine Guest in her soul. She attended school for barely three years. Still an adolescent, she left home to work as a domestic servant in Aleksandrów, Łódź, and Ostrówek, supporting herself and helping her parents.

From her seventh year she felt a religious vocation, yet without her parents' consent she tried to suppress it. At about eighteen and a half, during a dance in a Łódź park, she beheld a vision of the suffering Christ who asked how long she would put Him off. She went at once to the cathedral, then took a train to Warsaw with only the dress she wore. After working as a housemaid to gather the needed dowry, on 1 August 1925 she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. Clothed in the habit on 30 April 1926, she received the name Sister Maria Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament. She made first vows in April 1928 and perpetual vows on 1 May 1933 at Łagiewniki. For thirteen years she lived in various houses of the Congregation—especially Kraków, Vilnius, and Płock—serving as cook, gardener, and portress.

Outwardly nothing betrayed her extraordinarily rich mystical life. She performed every task diligently, kept the rule faithfully, remained recollected and silent, yet full of disinterested, kindly love. Her apparently ordinary, grey existence hid a profound union with God. At the heart of her spirituality stood the mystery of Divine Mercy, which she contemplated in Scripture and in daily life; from it grew filial trust in God and mercy toward neighbor. She wrote that she desired to mirror Christ's compassionate, merciful Heart and to have His mercy sealed upon her heart and soul as her distinctive mark in this life and the next.

On the night of 22 February 1931 in Płock, Jesus appeared to her in a white garment, with red and pale rays streaming from His Heart, and commanded her to paint an image according to the pattern she saw, signed "Jesus, I trust in You," to be venerated first in her chapel and then throughout the world, promising that the soul who venerated it would not perish. He also desired that the image be solemnly blessed on the first Sunday after Easter as the Feast of Mercy. Unable to paint, she later, with the help of her confessor Father Michał Sopoćko in Vilnius, commissioned the artist Eugeniusz Kazimirowski; the first image was completed in June 1934. Father Sopoćko preached the first sermon on Divine Mercy and celebrated Mass before the painting. Sister Faustina recorded her conversations with Jesus in her Diary, later published as Divine Mercy in My Soul. The Lord entrusted her with the message of mercy for the whole world and called her to cooperate in the salvation of souls, offering her life in sacrifice after His example.

Her religious years abounded in extraordinary graces—revelations, visions, hidden stigmata, participation in the Lord's Passion, bilocation, reading of souls, prophecy, and mystical betrothal and marriage—yet she knew that holiness consists not in these gifts but in the intimate union of the will with God's will. She loved the Eucharist and held a deep devotion to Our Lady of Mercy. Destroyed by illness (tuberculosis) and by sufferings she willingly bore as a sacrifice for sinners, she died in Kraków on 5 October 1938 at the age of thirty-three, mystically united to God. The fame of her holiness grew with the spread of the Divine Mercy devotion and the graces obtained through her intercession. The informative process was held in Kraków (1965–67); the beatification process concluded in Rome in December 1992. Pope John Paul II beatified her in Saint Peter's Square on 18 April 1993 and canonized her on 30 April 2000. Her relics rest in the Sanctuary of Divine Mercy at Kraków-Łagiewniki.

May Saint Faustina obtain for us a deeper trust in Divine Mercy, and let us practice today merciful love toward our neighbor.