Sister Faustina Kowalska: Her LIfe and MIssion

know how many she had unde r h e r wing. In le tters to S ister L. w ritten from Vilnius about ten years la ter, there is mention th a t whenever she was a t the shrine of "Our Lady of O stra Brama, she prays for all the s isters confided to he r care a t any time," which would seem to indicate th a t th e re were several. We have the recollections of two of them: S ister Louise, for whom S is ter F au s tina was "guardian angel" from the end of 1926, and S ister Ju s tine , who came to the Novitiate in Cracow in the second h a lf of 1927. She and S ister Louise became close a t once, b u t S ister Ju s tin e a t first was unwilling to listen to the h in ts given h e r by Sister Faustina , and did no t like h e r very much. However, in th e course of time h e r opposition broke down, and the two of them also became good friends. These were the f irs t "apostolic" duties of S ister F au s tina in the Congregation, b u t they las ted only a sho rt time, nevertheless leaving th e ir traces on the personality. To the end of h e r life she continued to feel a certain protectiveness to th e s isters who had once been under h e r care, which m anifested itse lf in thoughtfulness, sp iritual counsel and remembering them in h e r prayers. S ister Louise also remembers h e r "guardian angel" wistfully: "I remember tha t when I was in the novitiate and suffering from influenza, and it was almost carnival time', S ister Faustina came to visit me and sa id with emotion that the sisters were going to pray that evening to make reparation to Jesus for the sins committed in carnival time. For S ister Faustina" - Carnival time: the period s ta r t ing in J a n u a ry and continuing u n t i l immediately before Lent, given over in the outside world to p a rties, dances, theatregoing and o th e r recrea tions considered in a Catholic country to be unsu itab le in Lent. (Transla tor’s footnote) 418