Divine Mercy: The Heart of the Gospel

92 Divine Mercy: The Heart Of The Gospel family which yet was loving and devoutly Catholic. Her father in par­ ticular was a prayerful man, and made a deep impression on her. Because of Russian policy, which had closed the schools, combined with her own poverty, her schooling was limited to three semesters of primary school. Yet as one o f her biographers notes: She had ... a good deal o f innate intelligence, and during the course of her work she amassed an extraordinary knowledge of human beings, and their complicated spiritual problems ... Above all, she understood what faith is in human life and what are its needs if it is to develop fully and embrace the whole human soul.15 In the last stage o f her life, she turned to writing poetry, more or less successfully employing the verse form. Her biographer Maria Tamawska observes: She undoubtedly possessed great artistic sensitivity. Beauty was no mean element in her piety. But it was always the beauty of God’s creation, and not beauty created by man. The latter did not interest her at a l l ... She was, and remained uniformly to the end of her life, enchanted with Creation.16 The straitened circumstances o f her family forced her to seek employment in the city at the age of nineteen. While in domestic ser­ vice, she experienced a vision o f Christ and a call to serve him in a par­ ticularly intimate union. In a strikingly Abrahamic manner17 she left all and, literally traveling to the capital city with no resources other than God’s call and the protection o f the Mother o f God, found herself admit­ ted to a religious congregation, the Sisters o f Our Lady o f Mercy, where she would spend the rest o f her life. This was done without her parents’ approval, and so it was a doubly difficult move for her: in order to obey God, she had to disobey her parents. Yet they made their peace with her vocation, attending her first vows at which she consoled her visiting father with the thought that “the One Whose bride I am is my husband and your son-in-law.” 18 A unique, “chosen” soul, her life in the congregation was not always smooth. A member o f the “second choir,” her duties kept her from the full insertion in the life of prayer which she craved. Partly because o f her great disposability19 in a rapidly expanding order, she was often moved from place to place.