Who was St. Faustina Kowalska?
Helena Kowalska was born on August 25, 1905, in Głogowiec, a village in central Poland, the third of the ten children of Marianna and Stanisław Kowalski, and was baptized two days later in the parish church of Świnice Warckie. She had three years of schooling. From the age of seven she felt called to religious life; at sixteen she went to work as a housekeeper in Aleksandrów, Łódź and Ostrówek to support herself and her parents, who refused to let her enter a convent. In July 1924 she left for Warsaw to find one that would take her. On August 1, 1925, she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy on Żytnia Street in Warsaw. She received the habit and the name Sister Maria Faustina in Kraków on April 30, 1926, made first vows there on April 30, 1928, and perpetual vows on May 1, 1933. For thirteen years she worked as a cook, gardener and porter in the congregation's houses, among them Płock, Vilnius and Kraków.
On Sunday, February 22, 1931, at Płock, she saw Jesus with two rays, one pale and one red, and heard: "Make Me a picture of this image in the form that you see, with the inscription Jesus, I trust in You" (Diary 47). The first painting was begun in Vilnius in January 1934 by the artist Eugeniusz Kazimirowski, under her direction. In Holy Week of 1935 she told Father Sopoćko that Jesus wanted the image set up for three days in the Ostra Brama gate of Vilnius, during a triduum of ceremonies before the first Sunday after Easter, and it was displayed there for the triduum. In Vilnius too, on September 13–14, 1935, she received the Chaplet of Divine Mercy (Diary 475–476). At her confessors' request she wrote everything down. The Diary records the Lord telling her to write what he made known about his mercy "for the benefit of those who by reading these things will be comforted in their souls and will have the courage to approach Me" (Diary 1693).
Tuberculosis of the lungs and digestive system was diagnosed while she was in Vilnius. After months of illness and two stays in the hospital at Prądnik, she died at the convent in Kraków-Łagiewniki on October 5, 1938, aged thirty-three. John Paul II beatified her in Rome on April 18, 1993, and canonized her in St. Peter's Square on April 30, 2000, the Second Sunday of Easter, announcing in the same homily that this Sunday "from now on throughout the Church will be called 'Divine Mercy Sunday.'" He called her "a gift of God to our time, a gift from the land of Poland to the whole Church."
Why Catholics pray to St. Faustina Kowalska for trust and forgiveness
The message she was given comes down to two things: God's mercy is greater than any sin, and the way to receive it is trust. Franciscan Media sums up the revelations in her Diary this way: at a time when some Catholics thought of God mainly as a strict judge, Jesus insisted on mercy and forgiveness for sins that are acknowledged and confessed. The Holy See's biography quotes his words to her: "I do not want to punish aching mankind, but I desire to heal it, pressing it to My Merciful Heart" (Diary 1588). She herself wrote that "my sanctity and perfection consist in the close union of my will with the will of God" (Diary 1107).
That is why the image carries five words, "Jesus, I trust in You." At her canonization John Paul II said: "How many souls have been consoled by the prayer 'Jesus, I trust in you', which Providence intimated through Sr Faustina!" Two years later, on August 17, 2002, dedicating the new Shrine of Divine Mercy at Łagiewniki, he said that "apart from the mercy of God there is no other source of hope for mankind."
No papal document names her patron of the Divine Mercy devotion. The 2020 decree that placed her on the universal calendar gives the reason people turn to her anyway: she "became the inspiration for a movement dedicated to proclaiming and imploring Divine Mercy throughout the whole world." Catholics ask her for what the message was about: trust where trust has been broken, including trust in God after a loss; the courage to go to Confession after a sin that frightens you; and the ability to forgive yourself for a past that God has already forgiven.
How to pray to St. Faustina Kowalska
Her memorial is October 5, the day she died, an Optional Memorial on the General Roman Calendar since 2020; the nine days before it, September 26 to October 4, suit a novena to her. The devotion she received has its own rhythm, which you can keep on any day: the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, prayed on rosary beads; the Hour of Mercy at three in the afternoon; and the Divine Mercy Novena, nine days on which a different group of souls is brought to his heart, prayed before the Feast of Mercy on the Second Sunday of Easter. If you can go to Kraków, her tomb is in the convent chapel at Łagiewniki, with a relic on the kneeler before the altar, where John Paul II also dedicated the new Shrine of Divine Mercy in 2002.
Say the prayer below, then say the five words on the image slowly, until they stop being only words. Go to Confession; everything she was told points there. Receive Communion. And if shame or fear has become a weight you cannot lift, if guilt keeps you from sleeping or from functioning, talk to a doctor or a counselor as well as a priest. Prayer to St. Faustina is not a substitute for care.