OUR PATRON SAINT

Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska, Saint  (1905 – 1938)

Saint Faustina Helena Kowalska was born in the village of Glogowiec west of Lodz, Poland, on August 25, 1905. She was the third of ten children. When she was almost twenty, she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, whose members devote themselves to the care and education of troubled young women.  The following year she received her religious habit and was given the name Sister Maria Faustina, to which she added "of the Most Blessed Sacrament," as was permitted by her Congregation's custom.

In the 1930s, Saint Faustina received from the Lord a message of mercy that she was told to spread throughout the world. She was asked to become the apostle and secretary of God's mercy, a model of how to be merciful to others, and an instrument for re-emphasising God's plan of mercy for the world.  She willingly offered her personal sufferings in union with Him to atone for the sins of others; she was to become a doer of mercy, and by writing about God's mercy, she was to encourage others to trust in Him and prepare the world for His coming again.

She began keeping a diary in 1934.  For four years she recorded divine revelations and mystical experiences, together with her own inner most thoughts, insights, and prayers. The result is a book of some 600 printed pages that repeats and clarifies the gospel story of God's love for His people, emphasising the need to trust in His loving action in all aspects of our lives. 

After her death from tuberculosis in 1938, her closest associates were amazed as they discovered the great sufferings and deep mystical experiences that had been given to this sister of theirs, who had always been so cheerful and humble. She had taken deeply into her heart God's Gospel command to "be merciful even as your heavenly Father is merciful" She had fully embraced as her confessor's directive that she should act in such a way that everyone who came in contact with her would go away joyful.

The message of mercy that Saint Faustina received is now being spread throughout the world.  She was canonized by the Church on April 30, 2000; and her diary, Divine Mercy in My Soul, has become the handbook for devotion to The Divine Mercy. She would not have been surprised, for she had been told that the message of God's mercy would be spread through her writings for the great benefit of all souls.

She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1993 and canonized in 2000.  When canonizing her the Pope said,

“Today my joy is truly great in presenting the life and witness of Sr Faustina to the whole Church as a gift of God for our time.  By Divine Providence, the life of this humble daughter of Poland was completely linked with the history of the 20th century, the century we have just left behind.  In fact, it was between the First and Second World Wars that Christ entrusted his message of mercy to her.  Those who remember, who were witnesses and participants in the events of those years and the horrible sufferings they caused for millions of people know well how necessary was this message of mercy.”