Born on August 25, 1905, Helena Kowalska and her nine siblings were raised in a very poor and religious home. Helena had visions of Jesus himself, and after a lot of struggles, she finally joined the convent of Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. Faustina Kowalska only lived to be thirty-three years old, and she was canonized as a Saint in the year 2000.
Stanislaw and Marianna Kowalscy were the parents of ten children, one of them being Helena Kowalska. The family lived in Glogowiec, Poland, and they were a very poor family. The family was very religious and relied on the Roman Catholic Church a lot in life. At just the young age of seven, Helena saw her first vision of Jesus Christ, and she knew then that she wanted to
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She ran to the closest Cathedral, and he spoke to her, telling her to leave for Warsaw as soon as possible in order to join a convent. The next day, she made the 85 mile trip to Warsaw without telling her parents. As she arrived in Warsaw, Helena came forth to several different convents, but most of them turned her down for being too poor. Finally, the mother superior of the Congregation of Our Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy decided to give her a chance as long as she would pay for her religious habit. In 1926, Helena finally received her religious habit, and chose the name of Sister Maria Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament. In 1928, Faustina Kowalska took her first religious vows as a nun. She traveled to different convents as a cook, and when she was in Plock Poland, she started showing early signs of Tuberculosis so she was sent away to rest. In 1931, Jesus visited Faustina once again, and he asked her to paint a picture of him as the “King of Divine Mercy,” with the words “Jesus, I trust in you” written on the painting. Since Faustina didn’t have the artistic ability to paint, she asked different painters to do this for her. After three years, Eugene Kazimierowski finally agreed to paint the first picture. Jesus continued to speak to