Sister Faustina Kowalska: Her LIfe and MIssion

INTRODUCTION In w riting the story of the life of S is te r F au s tina Kowalska of the Congregation of th e S isters of Our Lady of Mercy, the apostle of Divine Mercy, certain difficulties are m e t a t the beginning. We do no t have accurate and firs t-hand knowledge of h e r life. The chief source is h e r "Diary", which she wrote during th e las t four years of h e r life a t th e command of h e r confessor. However, the re is little in i t on th e subject of he r childhood and early youth, i.e. the period before she en tered the religious life. I t is t ru e th a t in the f irs t version of h e r diary the re was a much more exact discussion of those years, b u t un fo rtuna te ly in the absence of h e r sp iritua l director, Rev. Prof. Michael Sopocko, S is te r F au s tina b u rn t h e r diary, misled by an evil spirit. Fr. Sopocko ordered h e r to rew rite th e p a r t th a t was destroyed, b u t she did so in an abbreviated form, incomplete and chaotic. Thus, she has left u s no information from th a t time in which th e principal aspects of the hum an charac ter and personality are formed, and we cannot learn from h e r (ap a r t from a mention in a single sentence) when h e r sense of vocation f irs t arose and how i t developed, la te r so beautifully to be realized in all its fullness. Only the memories of h e r fam ily and all those who k ep t h e r in fa ithfu l remembrance, collected in many cases m any years a fte r h e r dea th , can throw some light upon th e childhood and early youth of Helenka, who became S ister F au s tin a Kowalska. These memories are, 9