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coming from the hand of God” (Diary, # 1633), including her “violent and severe pains,”
fainting spells, or loss of consciousness. As St. Francis of Sales stated, “He who is able to thank
God equally for chastisement or prosperity has arrived at the summit of Christian perfection, and
will find his happiness in God.” 134
And, over time, by God’s grace, Sr. Faustina became a “model of Christian perfection.”
She put no barriers to the demands and the discipline of imitating Jesus and His Way of the
Cross. 135 She suffered much in her unique call as the “secretary” of Divine Mercy, especially to
“rescue souls;” a vocation within her vocation as a nun in the Congregation of Sisters of Our
Lady of Mercy, as God willed it for her. 136
II B.1 Suffering: God’s “Mystery of Love” and “Constant Miracle of Mercy” 137
(Diary, # 1584): In her Diary, Sr. Faustina wrote on God’s “mystery of love” as well as
His “constant miracle of mercy” that “transforms wretched and ungrateful souls:”
O inconceivable goodness of God, which shields us at every step, may Your
mercy be praised without cease. That You became a brother to humans, not to
angels, is a miracle of the unfathomable mystery of Your mercy. All our trust is in
You, our first-born Brother, Jesus Christ, true God and true Man. My heart
flutters with joy to see how good God is to us wretched and ungrateful people.
And as a proof of His love, He gives us the incomprehensible gift of Himself in
the Person of His Son. Throughout all eternity, we shall never exhaust that
mystery of love. O mankind, why do you think so little about God being truly
among us? O Lamb of God, I do not know what to admire in You first: Your
gentleness, Your hidden life, the emptying of Yourself for the sake of man, or the
constant miracle of Your mercy, which transforms souls and raises them up to
eternal life. Although You are hidden in this way, Your omnipotence is more
manifest here than in the creation of man. Though the omnipotence of Your
mercy is at work in the justification of the sinner, yet Your action is gentle and
hidden (Diary, #1584).
134
Ibid., Spirago Francis. The Catechism Explained, 145.
Ibid., Faustina, Diary, # xviii, 1784.
136
Ibid., Faustina, Diary, # xviii; 1612.
137
Ibid., Faustina, Diary, # 1584, 116, 121, 239; Pope Francis, “Misericordiae Vultus-Jubilee of Mercy,” 1n2,
12n25; Cf. Isaiah 53.
135
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