Sister Faustina Kowalska: Her LIfe and MIssion

in Lodz by rigorously observing fasts , no t only one-day fasts , b u t throughou t the whole period of Lent. She h e rse lf said th a t she h ad become used to th is a t home. Nevertheless, a t home th e re was a mother to oversee every th ing and to make sure th a t a proper proportion was k ep t and no excesses perm itted . B u t when Helen as a teenaged girl went to work and was responsible for herself, h e r youthful ferven t piety seems to have propelled h e r a t times to excessive multiplication of sacrifices for h e r beloved Lord. A lack of experience did no t correct, with necessary commonsense, the prom p t­ ings of h e r sacrificial love. Len t was universally kep t strictly in Poland a t th a t time, so th a t h e r employers’ being struck by Helena’s way of keep ing Lent gives rise to the suspicion th a t th e girl did so w ithout a sense of proportion and to excess, which, in a sho rt space of time, underm ined h e r hea lth . An in te re s ting observation of S ister Z., who was asked to look a fte r Helen du ring h e r postulancy in Warsaw, confirms th a t she was insufficiently nourished: "At the time, I was s itting in the refectory a t the table o f the postulants, and I was tak ing care that each ate enough. When S ister Faustina came to the refectory, she sat opposite me, and I then noticed that she took very little food onto her plate. I do not know i f she always ate so little; she sa id she did. Seeing this, I helped her to some more, so tha t she had a normal portion. A t firs t she refused it, then she wept and her tears fell on the plate, but she ate what I had p u t on it, and she made herse lf eat, so tha t later she ate normally." Bu t le t us not lay too much emphasis on Helena’s excessive fasts. Perhaps if th is were the only factor underm in ing h e r physical s treng th , i t would not have ended in tuberculosis. Bu t i t was a factor which weakened a still growing body, and when Helena en tered the convent h e r s treng th was already to some 9 Sister 257