My most cherished birthday gift this year was a beautiful, leather-bound copy of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska’s “Diary, Divine Mercy in My Soul.” It’s published by Marian Press of Stockbridge, MA, home to the Divine Mercy Shrine.
It is a work that one reads slowly. You savor it, your reflect on Faustina’s life and her suffering, you feel awed as she reveals her heart and soul, as she brings you the very words Jesus uttered to her in His miraculous appearances. You experience a sort of calm, a sort of Divine Mercy as you turn the pages. Definitely food for the soul!
I visited Krakow in 2016 and spent part of a day in Kraków-Łagiewniki where I visited the new John Paul II shrine as well as the nearby chapel that houses the miraculous image of Merciful Jesus and the tomb of St. Faustina. Photos inside the chapel were not allowed so the image of the chapel is from the St. Faustine website. Other photos are mine.
Today is the feast of St. Faustina….
THE SAINT OF DIVINE MERCY: MARIA FAUSTINA KOWALSKA
(franciscanmedia.org) – Saint Faustina’s name is forever linked to the annual feast of the Divine Mercy, the Divine Mercy chaplet, and the Divine Mercy prayer recited each day at 3 p.m. by many people.
Born in what is now west-central Poland, Helena Kowalska was the third of 10 children. She worked as a housekeeper in three cities before joining the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in 1925. She worked as a cook, gardener and porter in three of their houses.
In addition to carrying out her work faithfully, generously serving the needs of the sisters and the local people, Sister Faustina also had a deep interior life. This included receiving revelations from the Lord Jesus, messages that she recorded in her diary at the request of Christ and of her confessors.
THE JOHN PAUL II SHRINE OF DIVINE MERCY
At a time when some Catholics had an image of God as such a strict judge that they might be tempted to despair about the possibility of being forgiven, Jesus chose to emphasize his mercy and forgiveness for sins acknowledged and confessed. “I do not want to punish aching mankind,” he once told Saint Faustina, “but I desire to heal it, pressing it to my merciful heart.” The two rays emanating from Christ’s heart, she said, represent the blood and water poured out after Jesus’ death.
Because Sister Maria Faustina knew that the revelations she had already received did not constitute holiness itself, she wrote in her diary: “Neither graces, nor revelations, nor raptures, nor gifts granted to a soul make it perfect, but rather the intimate union of the soul with God. These gifts are merely ornaments of the soul, but constitute neither its essence nor its perfection. My sanctity and perfection consist in the close union of my will with the will of God.”
GROUNDS AND CHAPEL WITH THE RELICS OF ST. FAUSTINA
Sister Maria Faustina died of tuberculosis in Krakow, Poland, on October 5, 1938. Pope John Paul II beatified her in 1993, and canonized her seven years later.
REFLECTION
Devotion to God’s Divine Mercy bears some resemblance to devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In both cases, sinners are encouraged not to despair, not to doubt God’s willingness to forgive them if they repent. As Psalm 136 says in each of its 26 verses, “God’s love [mercy] endures forever.”
Joan's Rome 