Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska by Maria Faustyna Kowalska

Therese’s NO-NO’s wholeheartedly, as well.Īnd that’s where Faustina differs, and really TAKES OFF. Faustina’s tell-all supernatural memoir - cause you’re entering a life filled with that SAME candour, and that SAME luminosity.īut this book embraces rather than eschews St. Thérèse - you’ll know what I mean:įor that’s tantamount to plunging into St. If you’ve ever read the luminous confessions of another Saint, from the previous generation - the Story of a Soul by St. Lately I’ve turned off my on-screen “breaking news” bulletins too, and while that helps, my own self-repeated postmodern questioning doesn’t.Įnter this shy early twentieth century Sister with help.įor at this same time, James Joyce was showing off snippets of his soon-to-be published Anti-Establishment Bête Noire, his Ulysses - with its amazing Streams of Consciousness - over at the little Shakespeare and Company reading room in downtown Paris.īut, you know, this reclusive Sister in nearby Poland was just then writing this MASTERPIECE of a scrupulously reverent and acutely ethical Stream of Consciousness all on her own - WITHOUT Joyce’s influence!

Gotta admit, this is one of my all-time GO-TO reads for times - like these, especially - when my elderly mind is darting anxiously like quicksilver lightning. And it all started with a stressed-out, frantic and harried nun in entre-deux-guerres Poland. Know what? Today's Divine Mercy Sunday (or it was when I wrote this). She is venerated within the Church as the 'Apostle of Divine Mercy'. The Roman Catholic Church canonized Faustina as a saint on 30 April 2000, considering her a virgin and mystic. Subsequently, Pope John Paul II established the Feast of Divine Mercy on that Sunday of each liturgical year. Sopoćko used the image in celebrating the first Mass on the first Sunday after Easter. Faustina and Sopoćko directed an artist to paint the first Divine Mercy image, based on Faustina's vision of Jesus. Her biography submitted to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints quoted some of these conversations with Jesus regarding the Divine Mercy devotion.Īt the age of 20 years she joined a convent in Warsaw, Poland, was later transferred to Płock, and then to Vilnius where she met her confessor Father Michał Sopoćko, who supported her devotion to the Divine Mercy. Throughout her life, Faustina reported having visions of Jesus and conversations with him, of which she wrote in her diary, later published as The Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul. Her claims of receiving apparitions of Jesus Christ inspired the Roman Catholic devotion to the Divine Mercy and earned her the title of 'Apostle of Divine Mercy'. Saint Maria Faustyna Kowalska of the Blessed Sacrament, OLM, popularly spelled Faustina (born as Helena Kowalska), was a Polish Roman Catholic nun and mystic.

Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska by Maria Faustyna Kowalska