St. Faustina and Divine Mercy

A look at St. Faustina and the Divine Mercy Devotion

Fr. Kazimierz Chwalek, (Fr. Kaz) MIC, is Provincial Superior for the Mary, Mother of Mercy Province of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception and Vice-Coordinator of the North American Congress on Mercy. A member of the Marian Fathers since 1980, and a priest since 1987, Fr. Kaz worked on the first Polish edition of St. Faustina’s Diary and assisted with its English publication. I spoke to him about the new movie Love and Mercy: Faustina detailing the story of Sister (now Saint) Faustina Kowalska and the origins of the Divine Mercy devotion.

RJC: I normally do not do this, but just a quick little history of me: I was ordained in 1993 but we never learned anything about the Divine Mercy devotion, ever. That was until in my first parish where I met the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in Dorchester, Massachusetts. That is where I first heard of the devotion and I never understood it completely until I watched the movie. The movie spoke of the values and put everything together.

What do you see as the mission of Love and Mercy: Faustina?

Fr. Kaz: Maybe I can give you a threefold answer because I think that one answer may not be able to capture it. Number one, I think Michal Kondrat (Producer and Director) realizes that people just don’t read books anymore or just very few and that most receive and obtain information through media, films or some form of media. So, what he wanted to do is to bring the Gospel message, especially the message of Divine Mercy through a media that would be received by today’s people — people who are not religious and reading.

I think that it is truly bringing a gospel message because you know Divine Mercy is at the heart of the gospel. Because he wants people to come to know God — the God who is truly the God of love and mercy. Jesus brought this message at the beginning of the twentieth Century through a nun. I think that this message is sort like a way of recovering the biblical image of God and the effect it has on people.

People are broken and I think that the goal of this movie is first of all to bring forth the gospel through a film which many people usually enjoy seeing. It is a docudrama so it not just a teaching but it speaks of the history and biography not only of Faustina but also her spiritual director Father Michal Sopocko who is guiding her. He is there for her and it is done in a way that it is a narrative. It is a docudrama, there is a narration; there is a story line and then I think that not only that there are also witnesses of how people receive this message and you already know that the effect it has on people. Not only that but also through the example the image itself.

The Divine Mercy devotion involves an image that then Sister Faustina saw in a vision. Unable to paint, a local artist was commissioned to paint that image. The two had a frustrated experience because she kept telling the artist that the image had to be changed as he did not capture her vision closely enough.

Long after her death, it was discovered that the features of the face Jesus in the Divine Mercy image were perfectly congruent to the features of the face of Jesus in the Shroud of Turin.

Fr. Kaz: You know Faustina changed the painting at least ten times. She would go to see the painter who was frustrated there with her. There were some comic lines in the movie about the painter’s frustration. But the fact is she changed it and ultimately looked what happened: it is perfectly congruent with the Shroud of Turin.

I think that the movie and the purpose is both to come to know Faustina come to know her witness come to know her true love and mercy and to allow people no matter where they are in their lives to welcome it, to be challenged by it. You know there is too much today in the secular world of God being ripped from people’s hearts by powerful institutions — media, educational systems. So, there is the supernatural dimension of our lives that is being removed and here I think Michael’s purpose is to bring forth a quality production that is Catholic and sort of evangelistic to bring forth the message of the gospel into the hearts of the people.

RJC: The movie begins with a unique statement for a Catholic movie. It really kind of shocked me. “. . . that the people who formed the Church too often have distorted the teachings of Jesus and deformed his image.”

That really struck me. So, it is trying to say how you really understand Jesus is not really how Jesus wants you to understand him.

Fr. Kaz: I think the movie takes us right to the very beginning what happened in the Garden of Eden[1] and how the evil one led us astray, promising us that we would be like God. He placed this distrust in our hearts so we would distrust God. He placed this mistrust in us. Immediately we begin to see the true image of God is almost being taken away for us by the evil one and through subsequent history. We know that history includes the reality of forgetting God and moving away from him.

We see why that the Lord in his love and mercy brings us right back. He wants us to come to know him. We have Abraham and Isaac and all the prophets and ultimately the fullness of truth comes through Jesus. I think that in this case Pope John Paul II articulated the message so well. I think that he was influenced by Pope Paul VI. We don’t know who God is unless we see the Lord Jesus manifest the Father and we know the true mercy of God through Jesus through his life and death and resurrection. The second aspect is that we do not know who we are unless we look at Christ. I think that is probably what the movie tries to do is to introduce us right into the heart of the gospel itself. Pope Benedict says that the Divine Mercy message is not a secondary devotion but is the heart of the gospel.

RJC: I am currently reading Cardinal Robert Sarah’s new book, The Day is Far Spent, and he says that priests and bishops have basically stopped praying that is where the crisis comes from. He is calling us to more holiness and he is calling to prayer. He says that our biggest problem is basically getting lost in issues and political movements as opposed to seeking holiness.

When I saw the movie, I just got this strong reflection that I think the Lord is calling us back to that mission of preaching mercy and I cannot say I learned a lot of the message growing up.

Fr. Kaz: In the 1970’s there was a great emphasis on justice and this is where the difficulty came with Liberation Theology because of the emphasis on Justice.

John Paul II said that the pursuit of justice without the element of mercy will never bring us to justice. True justice is when you pursue justice and enrich it with mercy because you know the human condition. We cannot find true justice because of our sinful condition. We will never be able to break forth into the true dimension of justice. I think what happens is you see these movements you think bring us to paradise whether through a communist system or ideologies or something that we are going to bring this incredible element of paradise on this earth. It is not possible but only through prayer and through union with God through profound union with him.

Look what happens to Faustina when she enters this communion with God. She had no education and she would have been a failure. Two and a half years of education and you say you want to go out in life like that? But look what God does.

Same thing with Fr. Sopocko, he had a doctoral degree in Sacred Theology and he had a degree in education and all kinds of programs and training and you know what he said? “I did not realize how important this message of mercy is in scripture. I had to go back and read it because of her,” because when he was reading the diary, he was trying to read it and he said “I discovered literally this incredible dimension of Biblical knowledge of God and his mercy; yet, I had my doctoral degree.” So, he himself admits to the fact that he did not have this understanding that she had.

RJC: Something that I never heard before that God has two doors: judgement and mercy and the whole thing is to call everyone through the door of mercy so they do not have to go through the door of judgment. I never heard that before and that was powerful and I think that was the message for today.

Fr. Kaz: And Jesus uses the exact words in the diary and you see Pope Francis highlighted them. He says that time is short. If you do not want to go through the doors of mercy then you have to go through the doors of judgement, there is no choice.

At the bottom of the image are the words Jesus I trust in You! This is a central part of the message to seek and trust in the Lord’s mercy. This emphasis of trust may have been an obstacle to the devotion being approved on the first attempt because, according to Father Kaz, this was interpreted as being more Protestant than Catholic.

RJC: You are bringing up something that that really struck me that there is the concept that people have of Catholicism as it is kind of pelagian and what she really said is that our whole mission is really to save souls. Therefore, it is really about mercy and it is not about earning our way to Heaven. It is seems like she really had to deal with that clash of visions not in herself but in the church around her about dealing with getting to Heaven.

Fr. Kaz: Oh yes. Well I have to say that Divine Mercy is closer to the Protestant concept of trust because it always speaks of trust. The greater the trust the greater the blessing someone receives which means the greater the conviction. The Divine Mercy is also closer to the Orthodox position because of the icons. Jesus actually appeared on the 22nd of February in 1931 which is actually the first Sunday of Lent and the first Sunday of lent in the Eastern tradition is the feast of holy icons. Which means the Lord wanted to bring us together. Some of the early criticism of the diary is that she had this trust that only the protestants have. She was actually critiqued that she was more Protestant in her concept of trust.

That plays so strongly in the movie with “Jesus, I trust in you.”

RJC: Is this movie going to be available in other languages.

Fr. Kaz: It has been shown in two languages in Polish and English

It will be dubbed in Spanish, it is actually already dubbed. A lot of other language will have subtitles.

Information about the movie Love and Mercy: Faustina can be found at http://www.loveandmercymovie.com

[1]The Catholic understanding of the Genesis accounts of creation is not the same as you find in those faiths that see them as literal word for word accounts of the origin of the world. Then Pope Benedict preached at the Easter Vigil in 2011 that we see Genesis as a prophecy that points to the essence of the true origins of the beginning and end of our being. (cf Benedict XVI, Pope Easter Vigil Homily, 23 April 2011 http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/homilies/2011/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20110423_veglia-pasquale.html )