St. Faustina & Divine Mercy
Adapted from a talk offered at the All Saints Club
This past year I read the entirety of St. Faustina’s diary for the first time (rather than excerpts here and there), and in doing so I gained a deeper appreciation for St. Faustina’s life and her role in the Divine Mercy devotion.
Before I explain more about the Divine Mercy devotion, let me provide a brief overview of St. Faustina herself. She was born Helena Kowalska in 1905, the third of ten children in a poor Polish peasant family. At the age of 16 she went to work for wealthy families in order to assist her own family. She had long felt called to religious life and when she came of age at 18, she expressed her desire to join a convent. Her parents were not supportive, but at 19 she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy in Warsaw. There she was given the name of Sr. Maria Faustina.
Although we now know Sr. Faustina as a great saint who is well known around the world, during her own lifetime she lived a very simple and ordinary life; very few around her knew of the extraordinary mystical experiences she had in prayer. Rather, she was a devout and obedient religious sister, intent on carrying out her duties and faithfully living the rule of her congregation. While her order ran houses of education for young girls, St. Faustina’s own assignments were unassuming, including working in the kitchen, garden, and greeting people at the door as a porter. Throughout her time as a religious, she suffered continual poor health; much of her diary relates time in the hospital and her frequent bouts of illness. Eventually she died of tuberculosis at the age of 33, in 1938.
When reading St. Faustina’s accounts of her spiritual life, we must be careful to remember that impressive mystical experiences do not in and of themselves constitute sanctity. In fact, the devil can disguise himself as an “angel of light” and we cannot assume that any supernatural vision or audible message is from God. That is why it is always important to speak with a priest or spiritual director about such experiences and to test whether they are authentic. This was actually the reason for St. Faustina’s diary; because she had so many mystical experiences, the priest with whom she shared them asked her to write them down so he could review them. For clarity’s sake, he also asked her to specially denote the words spoken by Jesus (in bold in modern printed versions of her diary).
In terms of the history of the Church, the Divine Mercy devotion is a relatively recent development. Divine Mercy Sunday, which we celebrate today, was only instituted in 2000, a mere quarter of a century ago. In fact, 20 years after St. Faustina’s death, the Vatican prohibited the promotion of the Divine Mercy devotion, in 1959. This was due to faulty translations of the text, which made the Vatican suspicious that it was not in continuity with the Catholic faith. However, it was another Pole, Cardinal Wojtyla (later St. Pope John Paul II), who in 1965 not only decided to initiate the canonization process for Sr. Faustina, investigating whether she lived a life of heroic virtue, but also had her writings reexamined. This led in 1978 to the repeal of the prohibition of her diary and the Divine Mercy devotion, and to the 1993 beatification of Sr. Faustina. In 2000, Pope John Paul II canonized St. Faustina and also instituted the Feast of Divine Mercy on the Sunday after Easter, now known as “Divine Mercy Sunday.”
There are several aspects of the Divine Mercy devotion, giving us many ways to incorporate them into different seasons of our lives:
the image of Divine Mercy, with “Jesus, I trust in You” at the bottom. Jesus Himself described this image to St. Faustina and instructed that she have it made for veneration. The two rays represent baptism (pale ray) and Jesus’ blood (red ray).
the Chaplet of Divine Mercy (c.f. 476 in the Diary). It is prayed using a regular rosary but takes less time than a rosary since the prayers said on each of the beads are shorter. This Chaplet is especially efficacious at the bedside of someone who is dying; however, because God is outside of time, we can pray it at any time for those who are in particular need of repentance and mercy, or who have already died.
recalling the Hour of Divine Mercy (3:00pm), which is the hour of Christ’s death.
and Divine Mercy Sunday. Jesus asked St. Faustina to have this feast instituted on the Sunday after Easter, and Pope John Paul II fulfilled that request in 2000, 26 years ago. This is a day on which we are especially encouraged to go to Confession, receive Communion, and observe devotion to Divine Mercy.
For those who want to learn more about St. Faustina and the Divine Mercy devotion, there are many pamphlets (and websites!) that explain these various devotions listed above. St. Faustina’s dairy, Divine Mercy in My Soul: Diary of St. Faustina Kowalska, provides a fascinating glimpse of her life and her union with Christ; she realized that sanctity was found in union with God, especially cultivated through prayer, and not supernatural experiences. While many books provide excerpts and explanations of her writings, I found her diary paints a more complete picture; although it is thick, the narrative prose is engaging and a fairly easy read.
Leandra Hubka