Saint of the Day for 5 October: St Mary Faustina Kowalska

St. Maria Faustina Kowalska: the mystic of the merciful God

The Saint and Mission

Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, humbly inscribed in the pages of ecclesiastical history, emerges not only as a figure of devout consecration, but also as an emblem of a divine mission that echoes God’s merciful love. Her existence, permeated by ecstasy and suffering, translates into an admirable story of dedication and total surrender to a spiritual mission that transcends the simple act of believing, to arrive at the depths of a life authentically immersed in the mystery of faith. Saint Faustina’s mission is configured as a delicate interweaving of passion for God and a message that wishes to touch all humanity, guiding souls through the sometimes tortuous paths of earthly life towards the warming light of Divine Mercy. Faustina, with a heart permeated with untiring charity, welcomed within herself the voice of God calling her to become an apostle of His mercy, to reveal to the world a face of God not angry, but tenderly inclined towards human frailty. Her ‘Diary’, permeated with visions and mystical dialogues, is not only an intimate confession of her relationship with the divine, but becomes the vehicle through which the message of mercy is proclaimed to the world. Devotion to the Divine Mercy, which spreads thanks to her zeal, is not merely a devotional act, but a call to live mercy in everyday life, to make it an inspiring principle of all action. St Faustina, in a dimension of humble service, embraces her mission not with thundering proclamations, but with a life marked by prayer and suffering offered for humanity. Hers is a mission that takes place in secret, in repose, in daily sacrifice and self-offering. Her life thus becomes an uninterrupted interceding for souls, especially for those most lost in the meanders of existence. In the figure of St. Faustina, the mission is shown not as an external action, but as an internalisation of the divine message, making it flesh of one’s own flesh, blood of one’s own blood. Mission becomes the essence of life, the beating heart of every moment, a gaze that knows how to recognise in the face of the other the face of the suffering and risen Christ. Faustina lives the mission not as something to be accomplished, but as a being, totally and unconditionally, in the merciful womb of God from which she can draw the love necessary to be a visible and tangible sign of hope for the world. In her being small and hidden, St. Faustina reveals to us that the mission is not so much a doing as a being: to be mercy, to be presence, to be love that welcomes and gives itself, thus tracing a luminous furrow in time, inviting every soul to let itself be touched and transformed by God’s infinite mercy.

The Saint and Mercy

The figure of St Faustina Kowalska stands with graceful majesty in the history of the Catholic Church, bringing with her a message that seems to sum up all the sweetness and depth of the Christian mystery: divine mercy. Immersed in a life journey that saw her alternate moments of profound mystical union with the Lord with times of dark night of the soul, Saint Faustina becomes the channel through which the flow of God’s merciful love reaches humanity. Her ‘Diary’, scattered with revelations, visions and interior conversations with the Lord, becomes not only a spiritual treasure for those who walk the path of faith, but a true icon of God’s mercy that becomes close, that becomes human, that becomes the travelling companion of every man and woman on earth. Mercy, in the spirituality of St. Faustina, is not an abstract concept, but a beating heart, a living and working presence that becomes history, that becomes flesh, that becomes tears and smiles in the daily wanderings of humanity. St. Faustina thus becomes the apostle of mercy, the one who not only receives the divine message, but lives it, incarnates it, expresses it with every fibre of her being, finding in her own life, in her choices, in her silences and in her prayers, the utmost expression of this love that bends over human miseries to raise them to heavenly dignity. The relationship between St. Faustina and mercy cannot be recounted, therefore, as a simple affair of revelations or messages to be transmitted to the world. It is a dialogue of love that develops in the secret of the heart, a trusting abandonment into the hands of a God who is Father, a letting oneself be moulded by the Word that saves and heals. It is an experience lived in the flesh, in simple and hidden gestures, in an everyday life that becomes a theological place, a sacred space in which the encounter with the divine is realised. In mercy, St Faustina finds the answer to the dramas of existence, to the suffering that also touches her life, to the search for meaning that dwells in the heart of every person. For her, it is not only an attitude of God towards humanity, but a way of life, a way with which to relate to others, a pathway on which to walk in order to be, in turn, a visible expression of that merciful love that she experienced in her depths. And so, in her smallness, in her being hidden and silent, Faustina becomes great, because God’s mercy resounds in her life, that mercy that does not look at the extent of guilt, but at the vastness of the love that forgives, that welcomes and renews. And her story, woven of ordinariness and extraordinariness, continues to speak to us, to show us a possible way to experience and witness the Father’s immeasurable love in the world.

Hagiography

Helena Kowalska is a fellow countrywoman of John Paul II, who elevated her to the honours of the altars in the year 2000. She was born in Giogowiec in the district of Turek, Lodz province, on 25 August 1905. The difficult economic and social conditions caused by the First World War, which…

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