Devotion to the Saints: Saint Faustina tells you about the path of the soul

Prayer. - Jesus, my master, help me to enter with utmost fervor in this period of desert. May your Spirit, O God, lead me to the profound knowledge of you and of myself, because I will love you in the measure of the knowledge I have of you and I will despise myself in the measure of the knowledge I have of me. Lord, I abandon myself to your action: your will be fulfilled in me completely.

7. Like at a banquet. - «My daughter, I will lead you to this retreat as a banquet. Next to my merciful heart, you will meditate on the graces that I have given you and you will have a profound peace with you. I want your gaze to always fix my will and in doing so, you will give me the greatest joy. You will not undertake any reform of yourself, because you have already made your life available to me. No sacrifice is worth as much as this ».

8. Radiate divinity. - O God, I expose my heart to the action of your grace, like a crystal in the rays of the sun and I beg you to illuminate this heart of mine with your image as far as this is possible in a simple creature. I also beg you to radiate your divinity through me, you who dwell within me.
Jesus made me know that I must pray especially for the nuns, gathered in retreat together with me. As I prayed, I knew the struggle that certain souls were undergoing and doubled the prayers.

9. The path of the soul. - I know what I was made for. I know that God is my ultimate goal. No creature can replace my Creator in the path of my soul. In all my activities I aim for him alone.
Jesus, you often deigned to lay the foundations of Christian perfection in me, and I must recognize that my cooperation was very small in comparison. In the use that I now make of created things, you helped me o Lord. My heart is weak; my strength only comes from you.

10. I looked for models. - I want to live and die like the saints, with my eyes fixed on you, or Jesus. I looked for models around me without finding one that would serve to guide my action. My progress in holiness thus delayed. From the moment I began to fix my gaze on you, O Christ, who is my model, I know with certainty that I will achieve success despite my misery, I have confidence in your mercy and you will know how to draw a saint from me too. I lack the skills, but not the goodwill. In spite of all the defeats, I want to fight like the saints have fought and I want to act in their likeness.

11. The struggle does not dishearten. - My Jesus, despite your graces and while ennobling yourself, my natural tendencies never completely disappear. My vigilance must be continuous. I have to fight against innumerable shortcomings, knowing in any case that the fight never degrades anyone, while instead laziness and fear depress me. When you are in poor health, you have to endure many things, because who is sick and not in bed is not considered sick. For various reasons, therefore, opportunities to sacrifice themselves and, sometimes, these are very large sacrifices. But I understand that when God demands a sacrifice, he is not stingy with his help, but gives it in abundance. My Jesus, I ask you that my sacrifice burns silently but with absolute fullness of love before you to implore your mercy for the benefit of souls.

12. A new life. - My heart is renewed and a new life begins from here, a life of love of God. I do not forget that I am weakness in person, but I do not doubt even for a moment that God helps me through his grace. With one eye I look at the abyss of my misery and with the other I look at the abyss of divine mercy. O merciful God, who will allow me to live again, give me the strength to start a new life, that of the spirit, over which death has no power.

13. I will interrogate love. - Jesus, my most perfect model, I will advance in life with my eyes fixed on you, following in your footsteps, submitting nature to grace according to your will and to the extent of the light that illuminates me, trusting only in your help. Whenever I have doubts about what to do, I will always question love and it will give me the best advice. Jesus replied: «Among the occasions that my providence will send you, be careful not to miss any of them. But when you are unable to catch them, do not be upset, but humble yourself in front of me and immerse yourself with all your trust in my mercy. In this way, you will acquire more than you have lost, because to a humble soul my gifts come down with far greater abundance than she herself expects ».

14. Through me. - O eternal love, light within me a new light, a life of love and mercy, support me with your grace, so that I will respond worthily to your call and you will do in souls, through me, what you yourself have established.

15. Transforming grayness into holiness. - I feel I am completely saturated with God. It is with him that I go through daily life, gray, painful and tiring. I trust in him who, being in my heart, is busy transforming every grayness into my personal holiness. During these spiritual exercises my soul matures in profound silence, next to your merciful heart, O my Jesus. In the pure rays of your love, my soul changed its harshness, becoming a sweet and ripe fruit.

16. Fruits of mercy. - I get out of this transformed retreat. Thanks to the love of God, my soul begins a new life with seriousness and soul force. Even if externally my existence will not show changes, so that no one will pay attention to it, pure love will guide my every action, also producing fruits of mercy outside.

17. Be of advantage to your Church. - Yes now, I can be completely of advantage, O Lord, to your Church. I will be there through an individual holiness, which will transmit its life to the whole Church, since in Jesus we all form a single "body" together. That is why I work every day, so that the soil of my heart produces abundant good fruits. Even if this was never seen by the human eye on earth, nevertheless one day it will appear that many souls have nourished themselves and will feed on my fruits.

18. Thanksgiving. - These beautiful days of staying alone with Jesus come to an end. My Jesus, you know that from the very beginning of my years I wanted to love you with such a great love as no one has ever loved you yet. Today I would like to cry out to the whole world: "Love God, because he is good, because his mercy is great!". My being thus becomes a flame of gratitude and thanksgiving. The benefits of God, almost burning fire, burn in my soul, while the sufferings and sorrows function as wood over the fire and feed it; without such wood he would have died. So I call the whole sky and all the earth to join in my thanks.

19. Faithful to God. - I see Don Michael Sopocko concentrating his mind in working for the cause of the worship of divine mercy. I see him expose divine desires to the dignitaries of the Church of God to comfort the souls. Although for now he is full of bitterness, almost his effort did not deserve any other prize, a day will come when things will change. I see the joy that God will make him foretaste in small part from this earth. I had never encountered a loyalty to God similar to that for which this soul stands out.

20. Unstoppable mission. - O my Jesus, however much you feel in me a great push to work for souls, I must nevertheless obey the priests. Alone, with my haste I could end up spoiling your work. Jesus, you reveal your secrets to me and want me to pass them on to other souls. In a short while, the opportunity for action will open for me. The instant my annihilation seems total, my unstoppable mission will begin. Jesus said to me: "You know the omnipotence of divine grace, and that is enough for you!"