Saint Maria Faustina
Saint Faustina was born on August 25, 1905 in the small village of Glogowiec, Poland and was given the name of Helena Kowalska. She was the 3rd of 10 children of whom only 6 survived from infancy. Her family was very devout but also very poor and she received only 3 years of a very basic education. As a child she loved to pray and began thinking about a religious vocation from the age of only 7.
Prompted by a revelation from the Lord, she left home at the age of 19 for Warsaw where she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. Receiving the name of Sr. Maria Faustina, to which she added with permission, “of the Blessed Sacrament,” she was overjoyed in beginning her new life as a nun. It seemed to her that she had stepped into the life of Paradise. She humbly accepted her various roles as cook, gardener or doorkeeper; and to everyone she met, she was full of kindness and serenity.
Soon Our Lord began to reveal Himself to Sr. Faustina in amazing ways, filling her with extraordinary gifts including visions, bilocation, invisible stigmata, reading of souls, and prophecy. He directed her to keep a diary which she entitled: Divine Mercy in My Soul. He called her the apostle and secretary of His mercy and told her: “You will prepare the world for My final coming.” The diary is now widely available and has been a source of innumerable blessings to people worldwide. Everyone is strongly encouraged to read it!
Jesus told Sr. Faustina: “I desire that you know more profoundly the love that burns in My heart for souls… In the Old Covenant I sent prophets wielding thunderbolts to My people. Today I am sending you with My mercy to the people of the whole world. I do not want to punish aching mankind, but I desire to heal it, pressing it to My merciful heart.”
Through St. Faustina we have new forms of devotions to Jesus including the Image of Divine Mercy, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, and Divine Mercy Sunday. It is imperative that we as Catholics take these devotions to heart. As Our Lord told her: “Mankind will not have peace until it turns with trust to My Mercy.”
Sr. Faustina lived for only 13 years in religious life. She became a victim to tuberculosis, but she heroically offered herself in sacrifice to God for the conversion of sinners. She died at the age of 33 on October 5, 1938. She was beatified in 1993 and canonized in 2000, the first canonized saint of this new millennium. Interestingly, each of the miracles of healing accepted by the Church for these joyous occasions involved American citizens. Her feast day is kept each year on October 5.
We at St. Patrick Church are singularly blessed to have received from the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in Poland, a first class relic from the bones of St. Faustina along with its special reliquary which will be permanently kept in our parish.