Catholics around the world are well aware of St. Faustina Kowalska and her connection to Divine Mercy. But many may not know about the way in which Jesus talked to her about her calling, Hell, and her mission to proclaim the mercy of God. Here Catholic news.in shares seven important facts to know about this popular saint:
1. She was Helena. St. Maria Faustina Kowalska of the Blessed Sacrament was born in Poland as Helena Kowalska on 25 August 1905. She died on 5 October 1938, after being chosen by Jesus and Mary to become the unlikely apostle of the Divine Mercy. She died because of tuberculosis. She was canonized by Pope John Paul II on 30 April 2000.
2. She never planned to become a nun. Young Helena had no intention of entering religious life. While attending a dance with her sister Natalia in Lodz at the age of 19, she had a vision of a suffering Jesus, who asked her, “How long shall I put up with you and how long will you keep putting Me off?” After praying at the Cathedral she departed for Warsaw, where she joined the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. On 30 April, 1926, at the age of 20, she was clothed in the habit and received her religious name.
3. Jesus explained to her how his Divine Mercy image should look. Faustina wrote that on the night of Sunday, 22 February 1931, while she was in her cell in Plock, Poland. After partially recovering from tuberculosis, Jesus appeared wearing a white garment with red and pale rays emanating from his heart. According to her diary, Jesus told her to “Paint an image according to the pattern you see, with the signature: ‘Jesus, I trust in You’ [in Polish: “Jezu, ufam Tobie.”] I desire that this image be venerated, first in your chapel, and then throughout the world. I promise that the soul that will venerate this image will not perish.”
4. She had a vision of Hell. In October 1936, during an eight-day retreat, she was led by an angel to what she called the “chasms of hell,” which she described in her diary as a place of “great torture” and “fire that will penetrate the soul without destroying it — a terrible suffering.” This hell was filled with darkness, and, despite that darkness, “the devils and the souls of the damned see each other and all the evil, both of others and their own.”
5. Her vision of Hell with different orders. According to Paul Kengor, a professor of political science at Grove City College and a National Catholic Register contributor, Faustina “observed Dante-like sections of hell reserved for specific agonies earned in this fallen world.” “There are caverns and pits of torture where one form of agony differs from another,” Faustina recorded in her diary. “There are special tortures destined for particular souls. These are the torments of the senses. Each soul undergoes terrible and indescribable sufferings related to the manner in which it has sinned.”
6. Many hadn’t believed in Hell. Faustina said that what she was sharing was mere “a pale shadow of the things I saw. But I noticed one thing: that most of the souls there are those who disbelieved that there is a hell.” She testified in her diary: “I, Sister Faustina Kowalska, by the order of God, have visited the abysses of hell so that I might tell souls about it and testify to its existence.”
7. Visions were saving souls. Kengor says that “scary as they are, (these visions) also echo a positive urgency to mercy. Through these visions and their messengers, the divine is giving us yet another chance. We’re being warned to get ourselves in order, to stop sinning and to seek conversion and redemption, before it’s too late.”