Saint Faustina Kowalska

Helena Kowalska was born on 25 August 1905 in Głogowiec, a village in central Poland, the third of ten children of Stanisław Kowalski and Marianna Babel. Her father was a peasant and carpenter, and the family was poor and devout. She was baptized two days after her birth in the parish of Świnice Warckie. She had little schooling, and while still an adolescent she began working as a domestic servant to help support her family.

She later said she first felt a call to religious life at the age of seven, during an exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. Her parents would not give her permission to enter a convent. At sixteen she began working as a housekeeper in Aleksandrów Łódzki, where she was confirmed, and then in Łódź. In 1924 she traveled to Warsaw to look for a congregation that would take her. On 1 August 1925 she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, in the house on Żytnia Street in Warsaw. She spent her early formation there and then in the novitiate in Kraków, received the habit on 30 April 1926 with the name Sister Maria Faustina, and made her first vows on 30 April 1928.

In the congregation she did plain, practical work in several houses, as a cook, a gardener, and a doorkeeper, while her inner life deepened. She reported visions of Jesus and conversations with him, which she wrote down in a diary. She was moved to Płock and then to Vilnius, where she met Father Michał Sopoćko, who became her confessor and spiritual director and supported her devotion to the Divine Mercy. With his help she commissioned an artist to paint the first image of Merciful Jesus, based on her vision. Father Sopoćko celebrated Mass before the painting on the Sunday after Easter, the day that is now Divine Mercy Sunday.

Faustina died in Kraków on 5 October 1938, at the age of thirty-three. Her diary became the source of the devotion to Divine Mercy, which centers on the image of Merciful Jesus, the Chaplet prayer, Divine Mercy Sunday, and prayer at the hour of mercy. Her tomb lies in the Divine Mercy Sanctuary in Kraków, where she spent the end of her life. She was beatified on 18 April 1993 and canonized by Pope John Paul II on 30 April 2000, and she is known as the Apostle of Divine Mercy.

Saint Faustina Kowalska, pray for us.