Sister Faustina Kowalska: Her LIfe and MIssion

has been preserved from which i t appears th a t the picture was there in the la te au tum n . The Mother Superior says: "In November 1934, I became superior o f our house in Vilnius. One day, S ister Faustina came to me with the request that I accompany her to the cloisters o f St. Michael’s Church to see the image o f the Merciful Jesus pa in ted by Kazimierowski. I g lad ly agreed and we went there. My firs t impression o f the picture I saw was not favourable. I t seemed to me tha t artistic­ ally it was fairly mediocre. The face o f Christ was like a Byzantine painting , the whole body was out o f proportion and too short, the feet clumsily placed, etc...." (Archives of S.F., Recollections). S ister Borgia’s judgm en t was severe, too severe and partia l. We should therefore explain why this happened, and try to soften th is a rb itra ry critique. The picture was certainly h u n g badly, not only because of the lack of suitable light, b u t because there was a lack of space deep enough in the cloister. When the Mother Superior looked a t it, she was unable to s tand a t a proper distance: the picture hung too nea r and too low, and thu s was seen a t a disadvantage. The same picture, when la te r placed in th e O s tra Brama (Dawn or Eas te r Gate) and then seen from a distance and looking upwards, made a fa r be t te r impression, which F a th e r Sopocko mentions, and its symbolical content was sufficiently vivid to draw the a tten tion of all who saw it But however poorly l i t and hung , the picture, in th a t cloister, was a t leas t accessible to others, even if only the Bernardine sisters. I t can therefore be accepted th a t , even in th is restric ted sphere, we can count its effect on hum an souls as beginning. B u t th is minimal solution could no t satisfy Je su s , who never ceased to rem ind S ister F au s tina th a t the image should be placed in a church. But before it became b e t te r known, it 210