Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska (1905–1938)
Maria Faustina Kowalska was born in 1905 as the third of nine children in the quiet village of Głogowiec. Her family life was marked by deep faith but also by severe poverty. Owing to these difficult circumstances, she attended primary school for only three years before leaving home as a young woman to work as a domestic servant and help support her family.
Faustina sensed a strong vocation to religious life from the age of seven. At 18, she asked her parents for permission to enter a convent, but they refused because they depended on her help. Out of love and obedience, Faustina tried to suppress this inner calling. One day, however, she experienced a profound vision in which she saw the scourged Christ asking her: “How long shall I put up with you and how long will you keep putting Me off?” The experience transformed her life. In 1925, she joined the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in Warsaw and took the religious name Maria Faustina.
As a mystic, Faustina received numerous visions of Christ, which she recorded in her famous Diary at the recommendation of her confessor. Jesus entrusted her with the important mission of proclaiming Divine Mercy to the world. He expressed the wish that a special Feast of Divine Mercy should be celebrated on the first Sunday after Easter. He also instructed her to have an image painted with the words “Jesus, I Trust in You”, which was to be venerated throughout the world. Faustina additionally received a special prayer, the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, together with the promise that those who recite it with sincere faith would experience His mercy in life and at the hour of death.
Maria Faustina died of tuberculosis in 1938 at the age of only 33. Pope John Paul II canonised her in 2000. Her final resting place is in the church of the convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. Today, a magnificent modern basilica beside the convent welcomes pilgrims from around the world, a living place of worship and faith dedicated to Divine Mercy.
