5th October<\/p>\n
St. Maria Faustina Kowalska of the Blessed Sacrament was born in Poland as Helena Kowalska on Aug. 25, 1905. Young Helena had no intention of entering religious life, but at age 19, while attending a dance with her sister Natalia in Lodz, she had a vision of a suffering Jesus, who asked her, \u201cHow long shall I put up with you and how long will you keep putting Me off?\u201d After praying at the Cathedral she departed for Warsaw, where she joined the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. On April 30, 1926, at the age of 20, she was clothed in the habit and received her religious name.<\/p>\n
Faustina wrote that on the night of Sunday, Feb. 22, 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 \u201cPaint an image according to the pattern you see, with the signature: \u2018Jesus, I trust in You\u2019. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
In October 1936, during an eight-day retreat, she was led by an angel to what she called the \u201cchasms of hell,\u201d which she described in her diary as a place of \u201cgreat torture\u201d and \u201cfire that will penetrate the soul without destroying it \u2014 a terrible suffering.\u201d This hell was filled with darkness, and, despite that darkness, \u201cthe devils and the souls of the damned see each other and all the evil, both of others and their own.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Paul Kengor, a professor of political science at Grove City College and a National Catholic Register contributor, Faustina \u201cobserved Dante-like sections of hell reserved for specific agonies earned in this fallen world.\u201d \u201cThere are caverns and pits of torture where one form of agony differs from another,\u201d Faustina recorded in her diary. \u201cThere 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Faustina said that what she was sharing was merely \u201ca 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.\u201d She testified in her diary: \u201cI, 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.\u201d Kengor says that, \u201cscary 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\u2019re being warned to get ourselves in order, to stop sinning and to seek conversion and redemption, before it\u2019s too late.\u201d<\/p>\n
She died on Oct. 5th, 1938, after being chosen by Jesus and Mary to become the unlikely apostle of the Divine Mercy. Jesus described to her how his Divine Mercy image should look. She saw a vision of Hell. She was shown different levels of Hell. Her vision was meant to save souls. She was canonized by Pope John Paul II on April 30, 2000. Her feast day is Oct. 5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
5th October St. Maria Faustina Kowalska of the Blessed Sacrament was born in Poland as Helena Kowalska on Aug. 25, 1905. Young Helena had no intention of entering religious life, but at age 19, while attending a dance with her<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pormoll"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stsebastianaquem.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stsebastianaquem.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stsebastianaquem.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stsebastianaquem.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stsebastianaquem.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2301"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.stsebastianaquem.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2302,"href":"http:\/\/www.stsebastianaquem.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2301\/revisions\/2302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stsebastianaquem.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stsebastianaquem.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stsebastianaquem.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}