From S. Faustina Kowalska’s diary

S. Faustina Kowalska was born on the 25th of August 1905 in Poland ( in Glogowiec) in a poor and devoted family of farmers: she was the third of ten children.

Since her childhood she distinguished herself for the devotion, love for prayers, industriousness, obedience and a great sensitivity for human miseries. When she was sixteen she had to leave the family home in order to make her living and help her parents working as a servant.

When she wished to be part of the religious life, her parents denied her the permission but she never gave up and on the first of August 1925 she entered "The Congregation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Nuns" in Warsaw.

She spent the novitiate time in Cracow and she took her first vows before the bishop S. Rospond; after five years she took her perpetual vows: chastity, poverty and obedience.

Nothing from outside could betray her so exceptional rich mystic life.

She did her duties eagerly, observing all the rules of the religious life with faithfulness; she lived deep in prayers and silence and, at the same time, she was spontaneous, peaceful and full of warm and unselfish charity towards the other human beings.

All her life’s goal was to achieve a much deeper union with God and she actively cooperated with Jesus for the souls’salvation. God granted her great gifts and she tried hard and fought all the time on the way for the christian perfection.

The hard lifestyle together with the long and the difficult fastings weakened her body so that, as an already postulant, she had to go to Skolimov (near Varsaw) in order to better her health conditions.

S. Faustina offered her life for sinners and for this reason she suffered a lot for souls’salvation.

In the last few years of her life physical problems and inner sufferings increased: tuberculosis appeared, invading lungs and the digestive tract. For this reason, she was hospitalized twice for some months in Pradnik sanatorium near Cracow.

She died almost as a saint on the 5th of october 1938 at the age of 33 ( 13 years of religious life )

completely destroyed in her body but fully mature in her spirit, mystically linked to God. She was buried in the Congregation graveyard in Cracow but, during the information trial for the beatification cause, her mortal remains were transferred in the convent chapel.

Jesus gave this simple and not learned ( but extremely trusting in God) religious woman a great mission: the message of the Divine Mercy to the whole world.

" You are the secretary of My Mercy: I chose you for this task in this present and in the future life". (Diary, page 838)

"Let the souls know the great Mercy I have for them and urge them to be trusting in the abyss of My Mercy". ( Diary, page 818)

S. Faustina’s mission consists in remembering a truth of faith: the merciful love of God for men. The Divine Mercy’s cult consists in being trusting in the endless goodness of God and in the merciful work towards the other human beings.