Apostolic mission of St. Faustina consists the following:

 

1. Picture of Divine Mercy

 

It was in the convent at Płock, where Sister Faustina arrived in the May or June of 1930, that her great prophetic mission was to begin. It was Sunday, 22 February 1931. In the evening when she returned to her cell, she had a physical vision of Jesus in a white robe. His right hand was lifted up in a gesture of blessing, and His left hand was touching His breast from which two rays, a red one and a pale one, radiated out. After a while Jesus said to her, “Make Me a picture of this image in the form that you see, with the inscription Jesus, I trust in You. I want this picture venerated first in your chapel, and in the whole world. I promise that the soul that venerates this picture shall not perish. I also promise it victory over its enemies, already here on Earth, and especially in the hour of death. I Myself shall protect it as My glory” (Diary 47-48).

 

During her next confession she told her confessor about this incident. The priest told her to paint an image of Jesus in her soul. But as she left the confessional Jesus explained, “My image is in your soul. I want a Feast of Mercy. I want the picture which you will paint with a brush blessed in a special ceremony on the first Sunday after Easter, that Sunday is to be the Feast of Mercy. I want priests to preach My great mercy to sinful souls” (Diary 49-50).

 

On Jesus’ confirmation that He meant a material picture, she informed the local superior, Sister Róża Kłobukowska, about the situation, who demanded a sign confirming the truth of the visions. Word went round in the Płock convent that Sister Faustina had had a vision. The other nuns in the community became sceptical with respect to her. Some warned her of hallucinations, others declared she was hysterical and fantasising, and yet others acknowledged that she must be close to Jesus since she was bearing all this suffering with such calm. Her superiors directed her to priests, and the priests sent her back to her superiors. Sister Faustina wished a priest would come and resolve the question definitively and just say, “rest assured, you are on the right road, or “reject it all, for it does not come from God” (Diary 127).

 

In November 1932 Sister Faustina returned to Warsaw for the “third probation” and to prepare for her perpetual vows. Her superiors sent her first to the Congregation’s house in nearby Walendów, where an eight-day annual retreat was just starting under the direction of the Jesuit Father Edmund Elter, a professor of ethics, homiletics and rhetoric at the Gregorianum University in Rome. During confession, he assured her she was on the right road, and that her relationship with Jesus was neither hysteria, nor delusion, nor daydreaming. He advised her to be true to these graces, urging her not to stay away from them but to entreat God for a spiritual director who would help her in understanding and carrying out Jesus’ wishes.

 

After the retreat, she returned to Warsaw full of gratitude and spiritual joy to prepare during her third probation, along with two other sisters, under the direction of Mother Małgorzata Gimbutt, for the making of her perpetual vows. Towards the end of April 1932 she came to Kraków for an eight-day retreat which was to be followed by her perpetual vows. The ceremony for her perpetual vows was conducted by Bishop Stanisław Rospond on 1 May 1933. The Bishop bestowed on her a ring with the name “Jesus” engraved on it as the sign of eternal nuptial. From that moment her union with God was closer than ever before. She felt that she loved God and was loved in return. She was anxious to fulfil the mission Jesus had given her.

 

She waited for the priest He had promised and the chance to have the painting of the Merciful Jesus made according to God’s will. “The week for Confession came – she recorded in her diary – and, to my joy, I saw the priest whom I knew before I came to Vilnius. I had seen him in the vision. Then in my soul I heard these words, ‘This is My faithful servant; he will help you carry out My will here on Earth’.” (Diary 263). It was Father Michał Sopoćko and He was spiritual director and chaplain in the Vilnian archdiocesan seminary, and confessor to numerous religious congregations, including the Antokol house of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy for their confession week.

 

An experienced confessor, Father Sopoćko first tried to get to know his penitent, and not be misled by any delusions, hallucinations or fantasies deriving from human nature. He consulted Mother Superior Irena Krzyżanowska, asking for information concerning Sister Faustina’s religious life and asked for an examination to be done of her physical and mental health. When all the opinions, including a psychiatric examination carried out by Dr. Helena Maciejewska, turned out in Sister Faustina’s favour, Father Sopoćko still deferred for some time. He couldn’t quite believe it all and make up his mind; he prayed and while keeping the particulars of the visions and penitent fully confidential sought the advice of knowledgeable priests.

 

Finally, as he later disclosed, “More out of curiosity rather than conviction as to the authenticity of Sister Faustina’s visions, I decided to have the picture painted. I got in touch with Eugeniusz Kazimirowski, an artist who lived in the same house as I and undertook to paint the picture, and with Mother Superior, who allowed Sister Faustina to visit him twice a week to instruct him on the details of the painting.” After a few months, in June 1934, the work on the painting was drawing to a close. But Sister Faustina was not pleased, although the artist and Father Sopoćko did all they could to render as faithful an image of Jesus as possible. When she returned to the convent chapel, she complained to Jesus, “Who’s going to paint You as beautiful as You are?” (Diary 313). In a response she heard: “It is not the beauty of the paint nor of the brush, but my grace that makes this painting great” (Diary 313). The joy brought by the accomplishment of Jesus’ requests, the painting of the picture and its display for public veneration on the first Sunday after Easter.