St. Faustina Kowalska, whose feast we celebrate today, known today as the Apostle of the Divine mercy was born in Glogowiec, a village in the heart of Poland on August 5, 1905. She was the third of ten children of the pious peasant family. She was given the name ‘Helena’ at her baptism. She distinguished herself by her piety, love of prayer, hard work and obedience as well as by her great sensitivity to human misery. She left the family hearth to help her parents and to earn her own livelihood. She sensed the call to embrace religious life at the age of 7. When later she made her desire known to her parents, they didn’t allow her entering a convent. She strove to stifle this divine call within her.
After the vision of the suffering Christ and by the words of His reproach: “How long shall I put up with you and how long will you keep putting Me off?”, she began to search for a convent to join. She knocked on many convent doors, but nowhere was she accepted.
Finally, at the age of 20, she joined the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in Warsaw. She received the name Sr. Mary Faustina. She was assigned different responsibilities like cook, gardener and doorkeeper. She has fulfilled her responsibilities with all humility and simplicity. Nothing betrayed her extraordinarily rich mystical life. She died at the age of 33 after a long illness of Tuberculosis on the October 5, 1938. Pope John Paul II beatified her on April 18, 1993 and canonized on April 30, 2000.
She faithfully observed her religious rules. Jesus appeared to her and told her to start the Devotion to the Divine Mercy. The main source of the messages of Divine Mercy is the diary written under the obedience to the Lord and her Spiritual Director. If we go through her diary, one can understand the depths of her Spiritual Life. Jesus blessed her with great graces, with the gift of contemplation, with deep knowledge of the mystery of the mercy of God, with visions, revelations, the hidden stigmata, with the gift of prophecy and of reading into human soul and mystical experiences.
Jesus has chosen her as his secretary. “You are the Secretary of My mercy. I have chosen you for that office in the life and the next.”(Diary 1605) He has given her the mission to save souls. “My daughter give me souls. Know it is your mission to win souls for Me by prayer and sacrifice, and encouraging them to trust in My mercy.”(Diary, 1690). St. Faustina said ‘yes’ to Jesus and Jesus began to transform her. “Do with me as you please. I subject to your will.”(Diary, 136).
Her feast invites the follower of Christ, to have aim of saving souls. This requires one to follow St. Faustina’s spirituality and praying i.e quality and quantity. St. Faustina is a model for us to live an austere life and to witness the love of Christ.
