St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, Saint of the day for 5 October

(25 August 1905 - 5 October 1938)

The story of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska
The name of Saint Faustina is forever linked to the annual feast of Divine Mercy, the Chaplet of Divine Mercy and the prayer of Divine Mercy recited every day at 15pm by many people.

Born in present-day central-western Poland, Helena Kowalska was the third of 10 children. She worked as a maid 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 homes.

Sister Faustina, in addition to faithfully carrying out her work, generously serving the needs of the sisters and the local population, Sister Faustina also had a profound interior life. This included receiving revelations from the Lord Jesus, messages that she recorded in her journal at the request of Christ and his confessors.

The life of Faustina Kowalska: the authorized biography

At a time when some Catholics had an image of God as such a stern judge that they could be tempted to despair over the possibility of being forgiven, Jesus chose to emphasize his mercy and forgiveness for recognized and confessed sins. “I don't want to punish aching humanity”, he once said to Saint Faustina, “but I want to heal it, pressing it to my merciful heart”. The two rays emanating from the heart of Christ, he said, represent the blood and water shed after Jesus' death.

Since Sister Maria Faustina knew that the revelations she had already received did not constitute holiness itself, she wrote in her diary: "Neither the graces, nor the revelations, nor the rapture, nor the gifts granted to a soul make it perfect, but rather the intimate union of the soul with God. These gifts are only adornments of the soul, but they constitute neither its essence nor its perfection. My holiness and perfection consist in the close union of my will with the will of God “.

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 will to forgive them if they repent. As Psalm 136 says in each of its 26 verses, "God's love [mercy] lasts forever."