April 16, 2023 - "Sister Maria Faustina"

Helena Kowalska was born on August 25, 1905 and died on October 5, 1938.  She was born in what is now west-central Poland. After working as a housekeeper in three cities, she joined the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in 1925 where she received the name Sister Maria Faustina.  Once she entered the Congregations, she was assigned to be a cook, a gardener, and porter in three of her houses Warsaw, Plock, and Vilinius).  In addition to carrying out her assigned duties faithfully whereby she generously served the needs of the sisters and the local community, Sr. Faustina had a very deep interior life which included receiving revelations from the Lord Jesus.  She recorded messages in her diary at the request of Christ and also of her confessors. When she was assigned to Vilnius, she met Fr. Michael Sopoćko, who was to be her confessor and spiritual director.  In time he came to support her devotion to Divine Mercy.  With his help Sr. Faustina commissioned an artist to paint the first Divine Mercy image based on her vision of Jesus.  Fr. Sopoćko celebrated Mass in the presence of this painting on what was then called Low Sunday (now the Second Sunday after Easter or [as established by Pope Saint John Paul II] Divine Mercy Sunday.  Sr. Faustina died eleven months before the Nazi invasion of Poland which marked the beginning of the Second World War.
 
In her diary Sr. Faustina wrote that the Divine Mercy devotion would be suppressed for some time and Fr. Sopoćko would suffer for it.  This happened in 1959 when the Vatican forbade the Divine Mercy devotion and censured Fr. Sopoćko for promoting it. Six years later, the Archbishop of Krakow (later Pope John Paul II) opened a new investigation in 1965 and submitted documents in 1968.  This resulted in a reversal of the ban in 1978. Fr. Sopoćko was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008.
 
Pope St. Paul II wrote that he believed Jesus had chosen a humble Polish sister to receive private revelations concerning Divine Mercy that were duly recorded in diary because it was precisely at this time when those ideologies of evil, Nazism and Communism, were taking shape.  Sr. Faustina became the herald of the one message capable of off-setting the evil of those ideologies:  the fact that God is mercy—the truth of the merciful Christ.  For this reason, when he was called to the See of Peter, he felt compelled to pass on those experiences of a fellow Pole that deserved a place in the treasury of the universal Church.
 
On May 5, 2000, five days after the canonization of St. Faustina, the Vatican decreed that the Second Sunday of Easter would be known thereafter as Divine Mercy Sunday.  We are celebrating that today.  In the corner of the church, you can see the image of the Divine Mercy given the families of two young men who died far too young.  In the image of Divine Mercy Jesus appears with his right hand raised in blessing and his left hand touching his garment above his heart.  Red and white rays emanate from his heart, symbolizing the blood and water that was poured out for our salvation and our sanctification.  The Lord requested that “Jesus, I trust in You” be inscribed under his image. Jesus asked that the image be painted and venerated throughout the world.
 
Let me conclude this column with a reflection given by the late Pope Benedict XVI in his Angelus message of September 16, 2007:
“Mercy is the central nucleus of the Gospel message; it is very name of God, the Face with which he revealed himself in the Old Covenant and fully in Jesus Christ, the incarnation of creative and redemptive Love.  May this merciful love also shine on the face of the Church and show itself through the sacraments, in particular that of Reconcilation, and in works of charity, both communitarian and individual.  May all that the Church says and does manifest the mercy God feels for man.”
Until next week.
Fr. John