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“Lord, let your mercy by on us, as we place our trust in you” (Ps. 33: 22). “Mercy” is the watchword of today’s saint. St. Faustina Kowalska was born in the Russian Empire on August 25, 1905, in what is now Poland. As a child she loved prayer, work, obedience, and had a sensitivity to the poor. She received little formal education but wanted to enter the convent at an early age. She eventually joined the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in 1925 and took the name Sr. Maria Faustina of the Most Blessed Sacrament. She lived in different convents and worked as a cook, gardener, and porter. She did not exhibit any extraordinary gifts or talents, but she was graced with an ongoing union with God that gave rise to her writings in her diary.
“The Lord Jesus chose Sr. Maria Faustina as the Apostle and ‘Secretary’ of His Mercy, so that she could tell the world about His great message, which Sr. Faustina recorded in a diary she titled Divine Mercy in My Soul. In the Old Covenant He said to her: ‘I sent prophets wielding thunderbolts to My people. Today I am sending you with My mercy to the people of the whole world. I do not want to punish aching mankind, but I desire to heal it, pressing it to My Merciful Heart.’” (Diary, 1588)
Through her, we have the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, a prayer that uses the five decades of the rosary to pray: “For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.” She died in 1938 and was canonized by St. John Paul II in 2000. Divine Mercy Sunday is the Second Sunday of Easter. We are grateful for her. St. Faustina, pray for us.
*https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/200px-Faustina.jpg
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