Pillars of Fire In My Soul

when I was at that painter’s, who’s painting this image, and saw, that it is not as beautiful as Jesus is, I became very sad, but I hid that deep in my heart. When we left the painter, Mother Superior remained in the city to settle various mat- ters, but I returned home by myself, immediately I made my way to the chapel and I had a good cry. I said to the Lord: ‘Who will paint You as beautiful as You are?’ Of a sudden I heard the words: ‘Not in the beauty of the color, nor of the brush is the greatness of this image, but in my grace’.” Mr. Kazimirowski finally asked me that I help him discharge this task and for a few days pose dressed in an alb with a cincture around the waist. This made it easier for the painter after six months to paint the image, with which Sister Faustina was on the whole satisfied, and she no longer complained about its incorrectness. The image represents Christ in a walking posture against a dark background in a white garment, girdled by a band [belt, cincture]. With the right hand, raised to the height of the shoulder, He is blessing, and with the left one (with two fingers) he is opening the garment somewhat in the area of the Heart (not visible), from which are coming out rays (on the viewer’s right a pale [colorless] one, and on the left a red one) in various directions, but principally toward the viewer. Sister Faustina called attention to this, that the right hand not be raised above the shoulder, not to bend forward, and only place the left foot forward to indicate movement, that the garment be long and somewhat fallen into folds at the bottom, that the Lord Jesus’ gaze be directed a bit toward the bottom, as it happens when, standing, one looks at a point on the ground a few steps away, that the expression of the face of Jesus be gracious and merci- ful, that the fingers of the right hand be upright [erect] and freely lie close together, and on the left [hand] — [that] the thumb and index fingers hold the open garment; that the rays not be like ribbons [bands] hanging down toward the ground, but that with intermittent [broken] strips [streaks] they be 84 Pillars of Fire in My Soul