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October 5
St. Maria Faustina Kowalska
(1905-1938)
St. Mary Faustina's
name is forever linked to the annual feast of the Divine Mercy (celebrated on
the Second Sunday of Easter), the divine mercy chaplet and the divine mercy
prayer recited each day by many people at 3 p.m.
Born in what is now west-central Poland
(part of Germany before World War I), Helena was the third of 10 children. She
worked as a housekeeper in three cities before joining the Congregation of the
Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in 1925. She worked as a cook, gardener and porter
in three of their houses.
In addition to carrying out her work
faithfully, generously serving the needs of the sisters and the local people,
she also had a deep interior life. This included receiving revelations from the
Lord Jesus, messages that she recorded in her diary at the request of Christ
and of her confessors.
At a time when some Catholics had an
image of God as such a strict judge that they might be tempted to despair about
the possibility of being forgiven, Jesus chose to emphasize his mercy and
forgiveness for sins acknowledged and confessed. “I do not want to punish
aching mankind,” he once told St. Maria Faustina,
“but I desire to heal it, pressing it to my merciful heart” (Diary
1588). The two rays emanating from Christ's heart, she said, represent the
blood and water poured out after Jesus' death (Gospel of John 19:34)
Because Sister Maria Faustina knew that the revelations she had already received
did not constitute holiness itself, she wrote in her diary: “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).
Sister Maria Faustina
died of tuberculosis in Krakow, Poland, on October 5, 1938. Pope John Paul II
beatified her in 1993 and canonized her seven years later.
Comment:
Devotion to God's Divine Mercy bears some resemblance
to devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In both cases, sinners are encouraged
not to despair, not to doubt God's willingness to forgive them if they repent.
As Psalm 136 says in each of its 26 verses, “God's love [mercy] endures
forever.”
Quote:
Four years after Faustina's
beatification, Pope John Paul II visited the Sanctuary of Divine Mercy at Lagiewniki (near Krakow) and addressed members of her
congregation. He said: “The message of divine mercy has always been very close
and precious to me. It is as though history has written it in the tragic
experience of World War II. In those difficult years, this message was a
particular support and an inexhaustible source of hope, not only for those
living in Krakow, but for the entire nation. This was also my personal
experience, which I carried with me to the See of Peter and which, in a certain
sense, forms the image of this pontificate. I thank divine providence because I
was able to contribute personally to carrying out Christ's will, by instituting
the feast of Divine Mercy. Here, close to the remains of Blessed Faustina, I thank God for the gift of her beatification. I
pray unceasingly that God may have 'mercy on us and on the whole world' (Quote
from the Chaplet of Divine Mercy).”
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