In 1931, St. Faustina received a vision of the Divine Mercy Image: Jesus with His right hand raised in blessing and his left hand over His Heart, out of which shone two rays of light – one red and one white. Jesus commanded St. Faustina to depict the vision on an image with “Jesus, I trust in You” at the bottom, to promote its veneration, and promised special protection to the souls who venerated it, especially at the hour of death. He also promised the special grace of conversion to those who prayed the Conversion Prayer. He said, “The faithlessness of sinners rends My Heart, and the lack of trust in the elect increases my anguish.” In the five months that St. Faustina spent in Warsaw in preparation for taking her perpetual vows, she struggled to find a confessor who could tell her whether her visions came from God. Eventually, she found a priest who understood her at a retreat, and she understood that her mission was from God. After taking her perpetual vows in 1933, she commissioned an artist in Warsaw to paint the vision, but on first seeing it, she was so distraught at its inferiority to the vision of Jesus that she tearfully ran back to the convent chapel to pray. Jesus told her, “The importance of the image lies not in the beauty of the paint, but in the grace of God.”
Spiritual Talk – Fr Ho talks about St. Faustina (4)
