Sister Faustina Kowalska: Her LIfe and MIssion

tance: they came to ask for h e r p rayers and explained how they were suffering. Not long a fte r she had entered the convent, she had also had a general vision of Purgatory, to which h e r Guard ian Angel h ad taken h e r (see Diary, Notebook I, para . 20), and from th a t moment, as she he rse lf wrote, she was in close contact with "suffering1 souls, and well knew the ir needs. She h e rse lf prayed for them and encouraged others to do so. But she had had no special in te re s t in those who were actually dying. They need prayers even more than the "holy souls", for the holy souls, although they are in Purgatory , a re souls th a t have been saved, while for those who are dying, th is is th e ir la s t chance of salvation. However, th is knowledge had no t ye t ap ­ peared clearly in any th ing t h a t S is ter F au s tin a had w ritten . There is no mention of such realization in h e r Diary, nor has anyone who knew h e r commented on this. This knowledge appeared only during h e r time in Vilnius. The ward, Hedvig O., who worked with S ister F au s tina in the garden, says: "Every hour, she gave us an ejaculatory prayer for the dying. When we asked her why she prayed so frequently for the dying, she answered that it was all too little and tha t one should pray constantly, because a t every second some hum an being was dying some­ where in the world, who needed help." (Archives of S.F., Recollections). This account by a ward shows th a t S ister F au s tin a ’s personal b rush with death had awakened h e r sen­ sitivity to a need of the hum an soul of which up to now she had been unaware. From the moment she had had h e r own experience, i t was easier for h e r to sympathize with w ha t others were going through , and to use th is experience of h e r own to help others in a practical way. She fully realized the whole question of th e seriously ill and the dying only when, a t the end of 1936, she he rse lf was in hospital a t P r^dn ik n e a r Cracow. The 315