Saint Faustina Kowalska
Janis Balabon
2005
oil on linen
91.4 x 76.2 cm.
credit: Courtesy of Marians of the Immaculate Conception

DIVINE MERCY

Helena Kowalska was born to peasant farmers in 1905 in the rural village of Glogowiec in what was then occupied Poland. The third of ten children, she left school at 15 and worked as a housekeeper to help support her family. She began to consider a vocation to a religious life and at 18 traveled to Warsaw where she applied to a number of convents only to be turned down.

Finally in 1924, the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy convent in Warsaw accepted her with the provision that she first work as a servant to earn the dowry needed to pay for her habit and other expenses. A year later she entered as a postulant, and in August 1926 she became a novice, taking as her religious name Sister Mary Faustina of the Most Blessed Sacrament.

Sister Faustina spent the next five years in prayer and service and, while challenged by poverty, her life so far had been relatively uneventful. This was all to change on February 22, 1931. In her diary under that date she recorded,

In the evening, when I was in my cell, I saw the Lord Jesus clothed in a white garment. One hand was raised in the gesture of blessing, the other was touching the garment at the breast. From beneath the garment, slightly drawn aside at the breast there were emanating two large rays, one red and the other pale. In silence I gazed intently at the Lord; my soul was overwhelmed with fear, but also with great joy. After a while Jesus said to me, “paint an image according to the pattern you see, with the inscription: Jesus, I trust in You” (Diary of St. Faustina, 47)

Until her death from tuberculosis in 1938, she continued to report visions during which Jesus charged her with several tasks. First, to remind the world of God’s merciful love toward every human being and to encourage everyone to trust in the Divine Mercy. Second, to pray the chaplet, venerate the image, and celebrate the feast day associated with the Divine Mercy, as well as to perform works of mercy. Third, to initiate a worldwide movement of the Divine Mercy.

Like many previous mystics, initially the authenticity of her visions was questioned within the convent and finally by the Vatican, which in 1958 banned the Divine Mercy devotion. Father Michael Sopocko (1888–1975), her confessor, however, was convinced that the visions were genuine and against much opposition brought her case to the attention of the Archbishop of Cracow, Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, who launched an investigation of Sister Faustina’s work.

A re-examination of her diaries determined a faulty Italian translation had resulted in a misunderstanding of their actual content, and in 1979 the ban on Sister Faustina’s devotion was lifted. In 1993 Pope John Paul II announced her beatification and before a crowd of thousands gathered in St. Peter’s Square her canonization on April 30, 2000.

There is no question that the Divine Mercy and the Sacred Heart are not the same; they are separate recognized devotions. What they share in common is that Jesus’ heart is a central element to both. As Jesus reportedly explained to Saint Faustina, the two rays seen in her vision “issued forth from the very depths of My tender mercy when My agonized Heart was opened by a lance on the Cross." (Diary of St. Faustina, 299)

The faithful continue to consider Jesus’ heart a source of consolation and inspiration into the third millennium.

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