Sister Faustina Kowalska: Her LIfe and MIssion

The devotion to the Divine Mercy continued, and even preceded the hanging of the image in the church, as S ister Borgia recalls: "Concerning the devotion to the Divine Mercy, at the beginning S ister Faustina d id not figure particularly in this... With time, after the picture had been pa in ted by Professor Kazimierowski in Vilnius, the devotion began to spread. I t cannot be sa id tha t the devotion caused surprise or, o f course, any k ind o f scandal. Some o f the nuns were devoted to it; others, who were very critical o f S ister Faustina, thought tha t perhaps the Superior General and Father Sopocko were too credulous o f S ister Faus tina ’s ideas. Lay people, when they saw the pa in ting o f the Merciful Christ, tended to th ink it a variation on the image o f the Sacred Heart, w ith the strange difference tha t the Heart was not visible, but only the rays. Nevertheless, this very interest helped the spread o f the cult o f the Divine Mercy." (Archives of S.F., Recoil.). The devotion spread quietly and discreetly. Deprived of any element of sensationalism , i t spoke to hum an souls because of th e ir inner need, and not because of superficial attrac tion , as is so often the case with private revelations. The speed of its becoming wide­ spread is therefore the more surprising. When the Second World War came, with the tragedy of the Polish nation’s sufferings, devotion to the Divine Mercy was already established among th e people of Vilnius, and it spread to other towns [in Poland itself) as masses of refugees left. This was barely in the second yea r after S ister F au s tina ’s death. 220