Saint mary faustina kowalska biography of rory
Home / Religious & Spiritual Figures / Saint mary faustina kowalska biography of rory
Let Your mercy, O Jesus, be impressed upon my heart and soul like a seal, and this will be my badge in this and the future life (Diary 1242). Although her life was apparently insignificant and monotonous, she hid within herself an extraordinary union with God.
It is the mystery of God's mercy, which she contemplated in the word of God as well as in her everyday activities, that forms the basis of her spirituality.
Through her the Lord Jesus communicates to the world the great message of God's mercy and reveals the pattern of Christian perfection based on trust in God and on the attitude of mercy toward one's neighbors.
She was born on August 25, 1905 in G»ogowiec in Poland of a poor and religious family of peasants, the third of ten children.
While at a dance with her sister, Natalia, Faustina saw a suffering Jesus and then went to a Cathedral. Finally, the mother superior for the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy decided to take in Faustina on the condition that she could pay for her own religious habit. The Diary has been translated into many languages, among others, English, German, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Arabic, Russian, Hungarian, Czech and Slovak.
Sister Mary Faustina, consumed by tuberculosis and by innumerable sufferings which she accepted as a voluntary sacrifice for sinners, died in Krakow at the age of just thirty three on October 5, 1938 with a reputation for spiritual maturity and a mystical union with God.
The reputation of the holiness of her life grew as did the cult to the Divine Mercy and the graces she obtained from God through her intercession. In her daily life she was to become a doer of mercy, bringing joy and peace to others, and by writing about God's mercy, she was to encourage others to trust in Him and thus prepare the world for His coming again.
Her special devotion to Mary Immaculate and to the sacraments of Eucharist and Reconciliation gave her the strength to bear all her sufferings as an offering to God on behalf of the Church and those in special need, especially great sinners and the dying.
Credits:
Discriptions of saints lives and biographies have been excerpted, summarized, or compiled from Franciscan Media, CatholicSaints.Info, Catholic Online, and Wikipedia.
Faustina — know that your task is to write down everything that I make known to you about My 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). The process of contemplating and getting to know the mystery of God's mercy helped develop within Sr.
Mary Faustina the attitude of child-like trust in God as well as mercy toward the neighbors. From a very tender age she stood out because of her love of prayer, work, obedience, and also her sensitivity to the poor. "In the Old Covenant", he said to her, "I sent prophets wielding thunderbolts to my people. My sanctity and perfection consist in the close union of my will with the will of God.”
Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska died of tuberculosis in Krakow, Poland, on October 5, 1938. Pope John Paul II beatified her in 1993, and canonized her seven years later.
Reflection
Devotion to God’s Divine Mercy bears some resemblance to devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Called during a vision of the Suffering Christ, on August 1, 1925 she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy and took the name Sister Mary Faustina. As Psalm 136 says in each of its 26 verses, “God’s love [mercy] endures forever.”
Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska
On April 18, 1993 our Holy Father John Paul II raised Sister Faustina to the glory of the altars. She was baptized with the name Helena in the parish Church of Ðwinice Warckie. She worked as a housekeeper in three cities before joining the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in 1925. It delights not only simple, uneducated people, but also scholars, who look upon it as an additional source of theological research.
Sr Mary Faustina, consumed by tuberculosis and innumerable sufferings, which she accepted as a voluntary sacrifice for sinners, died in Krakow at the age of 33 on 5 October 1938, with a reputation for spiritual maturity and a mystical union with God.
Her reputation for holiness grew, as did the devotion to the Divine Mercy and the graces received from God through her intercession.
Several months later, Faustina returned to the convent.
Visitation by Jesus
On February 22, 1931, Faustina was visited by Jesus, who presented himself as the "King of Divine Mercy" wearing a white garment with red and pale rays coming from his heart. She was recollected and at the same time very natural, serene and full of kindness and disinterested love for her neighbor.
The precepts in question require the faithful to have an attitude of childlike trust in God, expressed in fulfilling his will, and an attitude of mercy toward one's neighbour. Instead, at 16-years-old, Faustina became a housekeeper to help her parents and support herself.
In 1924, Faustina experienced her first vision of Jesus. Today millions of people throughout the world are involved in this Church movement: it includes religious congregations, lay institutes, religious, confraternities, associations, various communities of apostles of the Divine Mercy, as well as individuals who take up the tasks which the Lord Jesus communicated to them through Sr Mary Faustina.
Sr Mary Faustina's mission was recorded in her Diary, which she kept at the specific request of the Lord Jesus and her confessors.
In both cases, sinners are encouraged not to despair, not to doubt God’s willingness to forgive them if they repent.