The Polish Nun Who Is Changing My Life

I want to love You as no human soul has ever loved You before; and although I am utterly miserable and small, I have, nevertheless, cast the anchor of my trust deep down into the abyss of Your mercy, O my God and Creator! In spite of my great misery I fear nothing, but hope to sing You a hymn of glory for ever. Let no soul, even the most miserable, fall prey to doubt; for as long as one is alive, each one can become a great saint, so great is the power of God’s grace. It remains only for us not to oppose God’s action.

-Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, paragraph 283

To become a Great Saint

Wherever you are, whatever you were doing before even reading this reflection, now, in this very moment, God wants and wills you to become a saint. As long as we live—in spite of our deepest misery, sins, shortcomings, fears, weaknesses, and anxieties—God offers us the gift of sanctity. God desires this for us because God loves us. And holiness, to be a saint—to dwell in Eternal Life in heaven—begins here, as we come to allow ourselves to be loved by Love and to Love God in return.

How do we do this? How can we even begin to "not oppose God's action"? 

We oppose God's action when we oppose God; we oppose God in our lives when we resist, when we oppose, Love. If we resist Love then we refuse to be loved. And when we refuse to be loved, we ourselves become incapable of loving... shriveling up, we turn away from the warmth of the sun, and cave in upon ourselves: dry and defeated. 

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus encourages His disciples to holiness as He teaches us how to seek and proclaim the Kingdom of God. This is the commandment Jesus gives to His disciples during the last supper, before He is hauled off to death: “I give you a new commandment: love on another. As I have loved you, so you should also love one another” (John 13:34). In order to be a "great saint" we must accept the word of Christ and put them into action. We must learn to be loved and love...  

Our love for others can only be measured by our love for Jesus. A true embrace of God's action necessitates an embrace of Christ. Saint Faustina illustrates this through her desire to Love Jesus with an incomparable love. Her Diary illustrates and articulates her life, her response to God’s gift of "Divine Mercy" in her life. 

What is Divine Mercy? 

The message of Divine Mercy is an articulation of God’s free and personal gift of love for us. Divine Mercy is a devotion that speaks into the doubt of our secular age where we are afraid to consider Jesus Christ as anything more than an ethical teacher or an influential religious leader. Divine Mercy calls Jesus Christ Messiah and Savior because it is a message that affirms the nature of God as True, Good, and Beautiful. Divine Mercy affirms that God is love, and that God loves me as I am today. Divine Mercy meets us in the upper room after the crucifixion. Divine Mercy reveals the studded and scarred hands of Jesus. Divine Mercy invites "Doubting Thomas" to touch the spear-pierced side. Divine Mercy exemplifies the cornerstone of the Christian faith: the fullness of God's power over sin and death. Divine Mercy is Love's triumph.  

Divine Mercy implies that God loves me as I am—whether I am a politician, prostitute, or plumber. Divine Mercy is a gift that cannot be earned and is offered and poured out for the whole world. Divine Mercy encapsulates the promise that as long as we still maintain our lease on life, there is Hope… Divine Mercy is an antidote to despair; Divine Mercy is anathema to anxiety about our future. Divine Mercy is medicine to the deluded madness of a world that tells us we need to earn love.

God’s love is free. It is total. It is unconditional. It is given to us as gift, so that we might live life anew. God’s gift of Love is meant to rattle us—it is meant to stir us to change, to conversion… not because God seeks to deny who we are, but because God desires to draw out of us the truth of our identity: who we are and whose we are… That we are created, that we are loved, that we are worthy, that we are seen, that we have a purpose, that we are of value even in the midst of our misery and suffering…

The life and message of Saint Faustina offers us this poignant proclamation: no matter how great the darkness, no matter how wretched the sinner, no matter how far the wanderer, God is greater…and His Heart is for you!

Casting the Anchor of Our Trust

Today, I have friends who have “cast the anchor of their trust” upon their future careers or their sex lives. They recognize their value by their ability to earn money, to give pleasure to someone else. When the dollars run short and the libido runs dry, truly, what remains except emptiness and resentment?  The “anchor of our trust” is the core of our reality. This refers to the very essence of my desire, the very crux of my longing. Where do I turn when I am in pain? Where do I go when I need fulfillment? Where do I set my ship in the midst of the storm of this life?

The only true source of life, of fulfillment, of peace, of happiness, of love is God. All else is fraught, false, temporary, and empty.

Faustina’s witness calls us to deeply question where we place our trust. She calls us to acknowledge the interior and exterior pains and longings of this life—to call misery and darkness what they are—but then to properly acknowledge God who is Mercy and Light, the very response to the deepest longings embedded within our human hearts.

Trust establishes a bridge through which we come to know and be known by God. To trust is to make and take an act of faith.

We have all been called to holiness, to become saints. And thankfully, our becoming saints is almost entirely out of our hands! Saint Faustina, like many other Christian witnesses, remind us that we must simply learn to love—to receive Love and to give Love. We must not oppose the work of God, the movement of the Spirit in our lives. We must actively work to take away all obstacles to His action around us and within us! (This might me watching one less show on Netflix or avoiding any extra-negative thoughts about that guy who just cut you off on the highway…) This is within our power…and then, trusting in God, He will raise us up, He will calls us on, He will equip us with the grace necessary to become the very children, sons and daughters, He sees and knows and desires us to be…

Perfection is possible. Perfection is possible once we realize that it is impossible for us to reach on our own, independent from the work of God.

I look to Saint Therese of Lisieux, a great inspiration to many, especially Saint Faustina, who wrote, “Perfection consists in doing His will, in being that which He wants us to be.”

To become a saint does not mean that we must write an epic diary composed of mystical visions and severe mortifications. Sanctity in the Christian life is simply the revelation of our Truest Self—the self before God. The self free from ego, from selfishness, from sin, from any other attachment—the self that is truly alive in, through, from and for Love, for God.

To become a saint, we must peel away the layers, take away the obstacles and live from our hearts…only then can we receive Mercy, and be Mercy to a world that is so torn in its misgivings, so lost in its miseries…