CURRICULUM VITAE 1. Sister Mária Faustyna Kowalska

Sister Mária Faustyna Kowalska is today known all over the world as an apostle of God’s mercy. Theologians rank it among the prominent mystics of the Church.

She was born as the third of ten children in a poor and religious peasant family in the village of Glogowiec. At the Holy Baptism in the parish church in Swinice Warckich, it was named Helena. As a child, she fell in love with prayer, was hardworking, obedient, and sensitive to human misery. She attended school for less than three years: at the age of sixteen, she left her home to earn a living in the service in Aleksandrow and Łódži and help her parents.
She had felt the voice of the vocation in her soul since the seventh year of her life (2 years before joining the first Holy Communion), but her parents disagreed with her entry into the monastery. In this situation, Helen tried to drown out God’s call, but the vision of the suffering Christ and the words of remorse: “How long will I still suffer you and how long will you deceive me?”

(D 9) led her to try to find a place in a monastery. She knocked on many monastery gates but was not accepted anywhere. On August 1, 1925, she crossed the threshold of the closure in the monastery of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Mother of God’s Mercy in Warsaw on Žitná Street. In her Diary, she confessed: “I felt like I was entering paradise life. One thank-you prayer came from my heart. “(D 17)

However, after a few weeks, she experienced the great temptation to move to another congregation with more time to pray. Then the Lord Jesus showed her his troubles and troubled face and said, “You will cause me such pain if you come out of this order. I called you here and not somewhere else, here I have prepared many graces for you. “(D 19)

In the congregation, he was named s. Mária Faustína. She performed the novitiate in Kraków and there, in the presence of Bishop St. Rosponda, made the first and after five years eternal religious vows: purity, poverty, and obedience. She worked in several convent houses, the longest in Kraków, Plock, and Vilnius, where she performed a cook, gardener, and porter’s duties.

Outwardly, nothing betrayed her vibrant, mystical life. She zealously fulfilled her duties, faithfully observed all religious regulations, was focused, could be silent. Simultaneously, she was natural, full of peaceful joy and vivid, selfless love for the neighbor.

DAILY OF SISTER FAUSTINA

Throughout her life, she has consistently strived to become more and more fully united with God and to work selflessly with Jesus in the work of saving souls. “My Jesus,” she confessed in the Diary, “You know that since childhood I have longed to become a great saint, that is, I have longed to love You with such great love that no soul has ever loved You.” (D 1372)
The Diary reveals the depth of her spiritual life. A careful reading of these notes gives us a picture of the high degree of unity of her soul with God: God’s in-depth relationship with her soul, as well as her efforts and struggles on the path to Christian perfection. The Lord bestowed on her great graces: the gift of contemplation, in-depth knowledge of the mystery of God’s mercy, visions, revelations, hidden stigmas, the gift of prophecy and reading in human souls, and also the rare gift of mystical marriage. Thus, very gifted, she wrote: “Neither grace, nor revelation, nor zeal, nor any gift by which she was gifted (the soul) will make her perfect, only the inner union of my soul with God (…). My holiness and perfection stem from the close union of my will with God’s will. “(D 1107)

The strict way of life and the exhausting fasts she had imposed before joining the congregation weakened her body so much that she had to be sent to Skolimow near Warsaw in the postulate to restore her health. After the first year of the novitiate came the harrowing mystical experiences, the so-called night, and then the mental and moral suffering associated with carrying out the mission he received from Christ the Lord. S. Faustína sacrificed her life as a sacrifice for sinners, and for this reason, she also experienced various sufferings to save their souls through them. In the last years, her inner suffering increased, the so-called night of the spirit and body pain. Progressive tuberculosis has affected the lungs and digestive tract. She was twice for several months for treatment at the hospital in Pradnik in Krakow. Physically quite exhausted but fully mature in spirit, mystically united with God, she died in the reputation of holiness on October 5, 1938. She was barely 33 years old, of which she lived for 13 years. Her body was buried in a tomb in the monastery cemetery in Krakow – Lagiewniki, and during the information process in 1966, it was transferred to the chapel.

The Lord Jesus has entrusted a great mission to this simple, uneducated, but brave, godless, trusting nun: A message of mercy for the whole world: “I am sending you,” he said, “to all humanity with my mercy. to my merciful heart. (D 1588) You are the secretary of my mercy, I have chosen you to this office in this life and the next (D 1605), (…) to make known to the souls my great mercy which I have for them, and to encourage them to trust in the abyss of my mercy. “(D 1567)