"Do not be afraid of anything, be faithful till the end ..."

Helena Kowalska, the future Sister (Saint) Faustina), was born in Glogowiec, Poland, located between Lodz and Wloclawek, to a poor family of ten children. Her father was a carpenter and a peasant. She reports in her diary more than twenty apparitions of the Virgin and more than thirty visions of Christ, angels and the dead.

In 1910, Helena writes that she saw the Virgin in a dream, who gave her a “tour of paradise” holding her hand. She had several other apparitions of the Virgin Mary. This one, among others, on March 25, 1936:

"Suddenly I saw the Mother of God, who said to me, ‘I have given the Savior to the world, and you must speak to the world of His mercy and prepare the world for the second coming of the One who will come, not as Merciful Savior, but as Just Judge ... Do not be afraid of anything, be faithful till the end ...’” (Diary, 251.)

Later, Faustina distributed some holy images of Jesus in Krakow and Wilno and people began to venerate them. In 1936, she fell seriously ill, probably of tuberculosis. She died in 1938.

In 1937, the archbishop of Wilno (then a Polish city; now Vilnius, capital of Lithuania) allowed the faithful to pray before the image he had installed in a chapel. Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, the young archbishop of Krakow, became promoter of the cause. After he became pope, he beatified Sister Faustina in 1993, then canonized her in the year 2000.

The Divine Mercy Sunday is now celebrated on the first Sunday after Easter.

The Marie de Nazareth Team