Saint of the Day Online - About St Faustina Kowalska of the Blessed Sacrament

Saint of the day online, Thursday, October 05, 2017

Saint Name: Saint Maria Faustyna Kowalska
Place: Kowalska, Poland
Birth: 1905
Death: 5 October, 1938
Feast: October 05

Saint Maria Faustyna Kowalska of the Blessed Sacrament who was born on 25 August 1905 in Głogowiec was a Polish Roman Catholic nun and mystic. Her apparitions of Jesus Christ inspired the Roman Catholic devotion to the Divine Mercy and earned her the title of "Apostle of Divine Mercy".

Faustina first felt a calling to the religious life when she was just seven-years-old and attended the Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. After finishing her schooling, Faustina wanted to immediately join a convent. However, her parents refused to let her.

Instead, at 16-years-old, Faustina became a housekeeper to help her parents and support herself.

At the age of 20 years she joined a convent in Warsaw, Poland, was later transferred to Płock, and then to Vilnius where she met her confessor Father Michał Sopoćko, who supported her devotion to the Divine Mercy. Faustina and Sopoćko directed an artist to paint the first Divine Mercy image, based on Faustina's vision of Jesus. Sopoćko used the image in celebrating the first Mass on the first Sunday after Easter. Subsequently, Pope John Paul II established the Feast of Divine Mercy on that Sunday of each liturgical year.

The Roman Catholic Church canonized Faustina as a saint on 30 April 2000. The mystic is classified in the liturgy as a virgin[5] and is venerated within the Church as the "Apostle of Divine Mercy".

On April 30, 1926, at 20-years-old, she finally received her habit and took the religious name of Sister Maria Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament and in 1928, she took her first religious vows as a nun.

Over the next year, Faustina traveled convents as a cook. In May 1930 she arrived in Plock, Poland. Soon after, she began to show the first signs of her illness and was sent away to rest. Several months later, Faustina returned to the convent.

On February 22, 1931, Faustina was visited by Jesus, who presented himself as the "King of Divine Mercy" wearing a white garment with red and pale rays coming from his heart. 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 reemphasizing God's plan of mercy for the world.

Faustina arrived in Płock in May 1930. That year the first signs of her illness (which was later thought to be tuberculosis) appeared and she was sent to rest for several months in a nearby farm owned by her religious order. After recovery she returned to the convent and by February 1931 had been in the Płock area for about nine months.

Faustina wrote that on the night of Sunday, 22 February 1931, while she was in her cell in Płock, Jesus appeared to her as the "King of Divine Mercy" wearing a white garment with red and pale rays emanating from his heart. In her diary (Notebook I, items 47 and 48) she wrote that Jesus told her

(Vision of Divine Mercy Jesus to St Faustina)

Paint an image according to the pattern you see, with the signature: "Jesus, I trust in You" (in Polish: "Jezu, ufam Tobie"). I desire that this image be venerated, first in your chapel, and then throughout the world. I promise that the soul that will venerate this image will not perish.
Not knowing how to paint, Faustina approached some other nuns at the convent in Płock for help, but received no assistance.[14] Three years later, after her assignment to Vilnius, the first artistic rendering of the image was performed under her direction.

In the same 22 February 1931 message about the Divine Mercy image, Faustina also wrote in her diary (Notebook I, item 49) that Jesus told her that he wanted the Divine Mercy image to be "solemnly blessed on the first Sunday after Easter; that Sunday is to be the Feast of Mercy."

In November 1932, Faustina returned to Warsaw to prepare to take her final vows as a nun. On 1 May 1933 she took her final vows in Łagiewniki and became a perpetual sister of Our Lady of Mercy.