Today is the Feast of the Divine Mercy. It was instituted in obedience to the Lord’s instruction to Saint Faustina Kowalska.
Faustina had a vision of the Lord Jesus amid great suffering and dying on the cross.
Out of Jesus’ heart came two rays. Jesus said: “The pale ray stands for the Water, which makes souls righteous. The red ray stands for the Blood, which is the life of souls. These two rays issued forth from the very depths of My tender mercy when My agonized Heart was opened by a lance on the cross” (Diary of Saint Faustina, 299).
“Paint an image according to the pattern you see, with the signature: Jesus I trust in You. I desire that this image be venerated first in your chapel then throughout the world (Diary, 47).
The Feast of the Divine Mercy, according to Jesus, emerged from the depths of tenderness of His mercy and everyone will contemplate this love and mercy throughout eternity.
“The Feast of Mercy emerged from My very depth of tenderness. It is My desire that it be solemnly celebrated on the first Sunday after Easter. Mankind will not have peace until it turns to the Fount of My mercy.”
On April 30, 2000, the canonization of Saint Faustina, then-Pope John Paul II, during his homily declared: “It is important that we accept the whole message that comes to us from the word of God on the Second Sunday of Easter, which from now on throughout the church will be called Divine Mercy Sunday.”
‘Recognize My mercy now’
Exodus, the departure of the Israelites God’s chosen people from Egypt, across the Red Sea to Mount Sinai is enough proof of God’s unfathomable mercy.
To Moses, He said He is a “God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6).
To Faustina, the Apostle of Mercy, Jesus entrusted the “three ways to ask for mercy” on the strength of His passion: the 3 o’clock prayer, the chaplet and the Novena to the Divine Mercy. It is man’s “last hope of salvation, to which response should be now while it is still the time of mercy.”
Tasked to spread the Lord’s mercy, Faustina said: “And if I exaggerate on Your Mercy?”
“Do you think you have written enough on My mercy? I am Mercy itself. Your words are but a drop in the ocean. Even if you were to write in all the languages of the world and of the angels, you would never say enough of My mercy.”
“Do whatever is within your power to spread devotion to My mercy. I will make up for what you lack. Tell aching mankind to snuggle close to My merciful heart, and I will fill it with peace” (Diary 1074).
Vision of suffering Christ
Born as Helena Kowalska on August 25, 1905, Faustina was the third of 10 children of a poor and religious family in Geogowiec, Poland.
At a young age, she was characterized as prayerful, industrious and obedient with a remarkable sensitivity to the needs of the poor.
She felt the initial calling to religious life while attending an exposition of the Blessed Sacrament at age 7. She had her first communion at 9.
After three years of schooling she worked as a housekeeper to help support herself and her parents.
She responded to God’s call to be a religious when she was 19. She was attending a dance affair with her sister Natalia when she had a vision of the suffering Christ.
She went to the cathedral to pray and was instructed to leave for Warsaw. It was nighttime but she was overwhelmed with the mystical experience that she immediately left for Warsaw, 85 miles away.
She attended Mass at Saint James, the first church she saw. She asked Fr. James Dabrowski on where to apply as a nun. The priest recommended that she stay with the Lipszyc family, his trustworthy friends, until she can find one.
“No to maids,” was the response she received from many convents after weeks of patient searching.
The Convent of Our Lady of Mercy was willing to accept her if she could pay for her religious habit.
Apostle of Divine Mercy
For a year she worked as a housemaid, depositing the money she earned. On April 30, 1926, she was finally accepted as a nun. Her parents attended her religious vow on April 30, 1928, when she took the name Sis. Maria Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament, said Catherine Odell in Apostle of Divine Mercy.
A nun for 13 years, she served in Kradow, Block and Vilius as cook, gardener, baker, porter and shop assistant. She faithfully observed rules, was serene, kind and recollected, and was externally not different from other nuns.
But internally she was a “mystic and lived in constant intimacy with the Lord. Her greatest yearning was to reflect Christ’s compassion to the world.
“Oh, my Jesus, each of Your saints reflects one of Your virtues. I desire to reflect Your compassionate heart, full of mercy,” Fr. Anthony Netikat, CM, quoted Faustina in Saints for Everyday.
The Lord did not only anoint her as apostle of Divine Mercy. He also gifted Faustina with the gifts of visions, ecstasies, hidden stigmata, prophecy and revelation.
Of these she wrote. “These are merely ornaments of the soul, but constitute neither its essence nor its perfection. My sanctity and perfection consist on the close union of my will with the Will of God” (Diary 1107).
Her spiritual director, Fr. Michael Sopocko, who ordered her to write her mystical experiences, commissioned Eugene Kazimirowski, an artist, to paint her vision of the Lord, and helped spread the devotion.
Faustina died of tuberculosis in Kradow, Poland, on October 5, 1938, at the age of 33. Two days after, the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, she was buried.
She was declared venerable on December 21, 1992, and blessed on April 18, 1993. Pope John Paul II canonized her on April 20, 2000, Divine Mercy Sunday.
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Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris Collegium in Calauan, Laguna, and of Mater Redemptoris College in San Jose City, Nueva Ecija.