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Saint Faustina Helena Kowalska was born in the village of Glogowiec west of Lodz, Poland, on August 25, 1905. She was the third of ten children. When she was almost twenty, she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, whose members devote themselves to the care and education of troubled young women.

The following year she received her religious habit and was given the name Sister Maria Faustina, to which she added "of the Most Blessed Sacrament," as was permitted by her Congregation's custom.

In the 1930s, Saint Faustina received from the Lord a message of mercy that she was told to spread throughout the world. She was asked to become the apostle and secretary of God's mercy, a model of how to be merciful to others, and an instrument for reemphasizing God's plan of mercy for the world.

It was not a glamorous prospect. Her entire life, in imitation of Christ's, was to be a sacrifice -- a life lived for others. At the divine Lord's request, she willingly offered her personal sufferings in union with Him to atone for the sins of others; 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.

Convinced of her own unworthiness, and terrified at the thought of trying to write anything, she nonetheless began keeping a diary in 1934 in obedience to the express wishes of her spiritual director, and then of Our Lord Himself. For four years she recorded divine revelations and mystical experiences, together with her own inmost thoughts, insights, and prayers. The result is a book of some 600 printed pages that, in simple language, repeats and clarifies the gospel story of God's love for His people, emphasizing, above all, the need to trust in His loving action in all the aspects of our lives. It also reveals an extraordinary example of how to respond to God's mercy and manifest it to others.

Saint Faustina's spiritual life was based on deep humility, purity of intention, and loving obedience to the will of God in imitation of the virtues of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

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.

She wrote and suffered in secret, with only her spiritual director and some of her superiors aware that anything special was taking place in her life. After her death from tuberculosis in 1938, even her closest associates were amazed as they began to discover what great sufferings and deep mystical experiences had been given to this sister of theirs, who had always been so cheerful and humble. She had taken deeply into her heart God's gospel command to "be merciful even as your heavenly Father is merciful" as well as her confessor's directive that she should act in such a way that everyone who came in contact with her would go away joyful.

The message of mercy that Saint Faustina received is now being spread throughout the world; she was canonized by the Church on April 30, 2000; and her diary, Divine Mercy in My Soul, has become the handbook for devotion to The Divine Mercy. She would not have been surprised, for she had been told that the message of God's mercy would spread through her writings for the great benefit of souls.

In a prophetic statement she had declared:

I feel certain that my mission will not come to an end upon my death, but will begin. O doubting souls, I will draw aside for you the veils of heaven to convince you of God's goodness (Diary 281).
 

 The Chaplet Of Divine Mercy in Song at

The National Shrine Of The Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Mass.

The Divine Mercy Healthcare Bill

 

The following is an excerpt from the blog of Sister Mary Martha.  Readers write in with questions on the Catholic faith and Sister Mary Martha answers them with great clarity and wit.  Besides; you've got to love a Nun whose motto for her blog is:

 

              "Life is tough. But Nuns are tougher. If you need helpful advice just Ask Sister Mary
               Martha. She'll help you. Just don't expect any sympathy."

 

 

A reader asks:

 

"Can you please do a detailed post on Divine Mercy Sunday? My father is under the impression that his "slate" is wiped clean on that day after attending Mass and if he were hit by a bus walking out the church doors he would go immediately to Heaven.

 

Wait, I think there's also something about attending Mass for the next seven Sundays or something like that.

 

I have a hard time believing a person can stand on his left leg, jump three times on three consecutive Sundays and then be granted immediate entrance to Heaven.

 

Please clarify. Thank you in advance."

 

I am thrilled that you asked!

 

Your father is more correct than you might imagine. That's part of the reason I was pleased to point out that next Sunday is Divine Mercy Sunday. Now for those details. How we love details!

 

First, let's start with the part where your father is right. Check out the name of this feast day: DIVINE MERCY. This feast is a shout out to the worst sinners and regular old sinners alike that God's Mercy is boundless. That means without boundaries.

 

God will forgive anyone for anything as long as the person is truly sorry for their mistake, even if 'mistake' is just euphemism for heinous crime, debauchery or mayhem. This is God's mercy, not ours. It's what Jesus came to tell us about, which is why the Pope stuck it onto the second Sunday after Easter. God's Divine Mercy rather sums up just about everything Jesus wanted you to know.

 

Jesus appeared to a nun named Sister Faustina, and told her all about God's Divine Mercy. He sent an angel to take her on a tour of hell so that she could be very specific when she talked about what people might avoid by seeking God's Mercy. Then he gave her a plan, and a nice portrait of Himself, to guide people to receiving God' Mercy.

 

So, your father is absolutely correct that by participating in the second Sunday of Easter devotion to Divine Mercy, he could walk out of church, get hit by a bus and go straight to heaven.

 

So....let's talk about two more things:

 

1. What it means to participate.

 

2. What is a plenary indulgence.

 

PARTICIPATION: Your father can't just skip to my Lou into church on Sunday and skip back out and expect to get a plenary indulgence. He'll have to also go to confession, receive Holy Communion, pray for the Pope and stay sin free until the bus hits him. He'd better jolly well go to Mass for the next umpteen Sundays and every Sunday after that, because if you are an able bodied person, it's a mortal sin to miss Mass on Sunday.

 

PLENARY INDULGENCE: People have a major problem with the idea of indulgences. I think that a lot of people don't know what they are. At all.

 

Once you confess your sins and are forgiven, you still have to pay the piper and be punished for your sin. An indulgence is a pass on the punishment portion of sins

 

At the risk of dredging up the complaints of Martin Luther, I will make an analogy. You go to the hospital very sick, they do all kinds of things to you to make you better and you actually get well.

 

That would be the confession part.

 

But now you have a big fat hospital bill to pay. The sicker you were, the bigger the bill.

That's the punishment for sin part.

 

Now suppose the hospital waived your bill, or part of your bill.

 

If they waived part of the bill, that would be an indulgence. If they waived the whole thing, that would be a plenary indulgence. A complete waive of the punishment due for your sins that you just confessed (and one's you forgot to confess as long as you actually forgot and didn't "forget").

 

A plenary indulgence is what you get for your participation in the Divine Mercy devotion next Sunday. That means you actually have work to do. You have to go to confession. You have to have no sin in your heart. You have to go to Holy Communion. You have to pray for the Pope.

 

And the indulgence, even the plenary indulgence, is only good until you sin again. Going with our hospital analogy, you got sick, got well in the hospital, the hospital waived the whole bill and then....you get sick again. Maybe you have the same illness, maybe you have something new, maybe it's just a little glitch, a slight complication, but how you're sick again. AND even after you're well again, you're going to have to deal with a new bill.

 

That means that your father could being walking out of church, have a sinful thought about Mrs. Sheffield lumbering out the door in front of him and when the bus hits him there at the curb, he will find himself in Purgatory with a bill to pay. Let's hope he doesn't manage to commit a mortal sin on the way out the door or he will be doing more than touring Hell.

 

To read original article at Sister Mary Martha's blog click here.....

 

 

Divine Mercy Sunday Links:

 

How To Celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday

 

Divine Mercy Chaplet - From the EWTN website

 

Divine Mercy Novena - From the EWTN website

 

The Divine Mercy Website - good source of Divine Mercy information by the Marians of the Immaculate Conception