Helena Kowalska was born in the little rural village of Glogowiec, Poland, in 1905. As early as the age of seven, she heard the voice of the Lord in her soul, calling her to a more perfect way of life. As a result, just before her 20th birthday with hardly a penny to her name and without her parents’ permission, she journeyed alone by rail to Warsaw to pursue the religious life. A year later, she entered the convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. Over the next few years, Sr. Maria Faustina of the Most Blessed Sacrament (Helena’s religious name) deepened her life of prayer and grew strong in her practice of the Christian virtues. She regularly performed the most menial tasks for her community: cook, gardener, and porter, for example. But she was noted especially for her cheerfulness, for her care for the poor who came to the convent seeking food, and for her loving kindness to the girls whom the sisters trained and educated in their houses. In fact, many of the sisters knew of her desire for holiness, and so they trusted her and came to her for counsel and advice — so much so that she earned the nickname the dump, because they were always dumping their problems on her. After an intense period of spiritual purification that occurred early in her life as a religious, our Lord brought her into a special intimacy with His merciful Heart. She began to receive mystical revelations, visions, locutions, and prophecies, all focused on the same theme: the mercy of the Lord for the lost and the broken. At the command of her spiritual director, she recorded her spiritual experiences in her Diary, which is now regarded as an outstanding spiritual classic of the 20th century and a miracle in itself, given that Sr. Faustina had barely two winters of elementary education. Sister Faustina also bore many sufferings: the tuberculosis which gradually ravaged her body, the uncharitable misinterpretation of her growing physical weakness by many of her fellow sisters, her anguish about her own seeming inability to carry out the Lord’s requests to her. He had asked her to initiate several forms of devotion to His Divine Mercy throughout the world, that a wayward and wounded mankind — already headed for a second world war — might soon learn to ask for His mercy, completely trust in His mercy, and be merciful to others, as He is merciful. Sister Faustina offered up all her prayers, works, and sufferings, in union with the crucified Jesus, for mercy upon poor sinners, especially those who have lost their trust in God’s goodness. In addition, our Lord frequently appeared to her as a child, asking her to learn from Him the lesson of spiritual childhood: to approach God with humility and trust, as a little child would do. These themes of her spiritual life echo the little way of another great mystic of modern times, St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Sister Faustina died on October 5, 1938, but her mission was far from over. In fact, it was only just beginning. She wrote: I feel certain that my mission will not come to an end upon my death, but will begin. O doubting souls, I will draw aside the veils of heaven to convince you of God’s goodness (Diary, 281). By her heavenly intercessions, St. Faustina has been fulfilling that promise ever since, obtaining countless graces and miracles for suffering souls from the compassionate Heart of Jesus: 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. Glorifying Your mercy is the exclusive task of my life (Diary, 1242). Perhaps the message and mission of St. Faustina to the modern world was best summed up by the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, in his homily for her beatification on Divine Mercy Sunday, April 18, 1993: Her mission continues and is yielding astonishing fruit. 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 … 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.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 04:21:06 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015