After learning about St. Faustina’s message of mercy, Vincentian
Sr. Paulette Honegosky helps others understand the love and mercy
of God. (HENRIETTA GOMES | CATHOLIC HERALD)
Although the message of Divine Mercy is not a new message, Vinventian
Sister of Charity Sister Paulette Honegosky, feels a great urgency to
spread St. Faustina’sa
message of God’s mercy to all people.
“Divine Mercy is a reminder to each of us that God loves us; He knows each
of us by name, and His love and mercy, for each and all, is forever,” said
the nun, who travels to parishes around the diocese speaking about mercy.
Sister Paulette, whose aunt married Stan Bransky, a first cousin of St. Faustina,
grew up hearing stories from Bransky about his Polish cousins living in Krakow.
However, it was in 1981, when Sister Paulette first learned from Bransky’s
daughter about the apparitions of Jesus to St. Faustina, who died in 1938.
Although there is no blood relation, Sister Paulette feels a close connection
with the Polish saint. Learning about the message of St. Faustina and Divine
Mercy appealed to her and she said she felt “called to teach her message.” In
2000, Sister Paulette attended the canonization of St. Faustina at St. Peter’s
Square in Rome. Three years later, she traveled to Poland for the first time,
where she “felt more intensely than ever, the need to tell others about
the message from Christ that she received to give to the world.”
From 1931 to 1938, Jesus appeared to St. Marie Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun
in Krakow. Under obedience to her spiritual director, she kept a diary and wrote
her conversations with the Lord and the revelations about His mercy and love.
According to the account in her diary, now published under the title, Divine Mercy
in My Soul, Jesus appeared to St. Faustina wearing a white robe with white
and red rays flowing out from His heart. The rays signify the blood and water
that gushed forth when He was pierced with a lance as He hung on the cross.
Jesus asked St. Faustina to have the image painted with the words, “Jesus
I trust in You,” inscribed at the bottom. Jesus also taught her the Chaplet
of Divine Mercy, which He asked her to teach others and pray at the three o’clock
hour, the hour when He died, also known as the “hour of mercy.”
Calling the diary “awesome,” Sister Paulette, who read the 600-plus
page book in 1997, noted that St. Faustina, who only had three years of formal
education, must have been inspired by the Holy Spirit to write so profoundly.
While Sister Paulette earned several college degrees and was taught by great
professors, she said that St. Faustina had a personal encounter with “Wisdom
Himself.”
St. Faustina’s message of Divine Mercy is that God’s love is unending
despite the worst sins. People should ask for His mercy, show mercy to others
and trust in Him. It is a message of commitment and abandonment to God as Mercy.
“Unless we begin to teach mercy, I don’t know where the world’s
going to go,” said the soft-spoken nun, seated on a couch in the lobby
of the Arlington condominium building, where she lives.
“Given that the world today is in such turmoil, we need a deeper understanding
of God,” said Sister Paulette, who spoke at St. Thomas a Becket Church
in Reston last Friday.
“Mercy is not just something we received from God, but something we give
to each other, and our whole world would be different if we were all about it,” she
said.
Originally from Pittsburgh, Sister Paulette felt called to the religious life
at the young age of 12, but entered her community a few years after graduating
from college.
Growing up during the time of the Great Depression, she remembers her father,
a grocery store owner, helping the poor in their neighborhood. It was something
ingrained in her and she saw it as a form of mercy. “Mercy is not just
something we receive from God, but something we give to each other,” she
said.
Because of her academic work, she felt called to teach, but she was sent to an
impoverished neighborhood to be “mercy” to those who lived there.
Now, by speaking about the message of mercy, she is teaching in a different way.
“The love of Christ urges (me) and I feel impelled,” she said about
spreading the devotion of Divine Mercy.
“We must think, pray, do and live mercy,” she said.
For now, it is her mission to spread St. Faustina’s message “until
the whole of humanity knows and experiences His mercy and unconditional Love.”
Henrietta Gomes can be reached at hgomes@catholicherald.com.
Pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet
Using rosary beads, start on the three introductory Hail Mary beads
with:
Our Father
Hail Mary
Apostles’ Creed
On the Our Father beads:
Eternal Father, I offer you the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of
your dearly beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our
sins, and those of the whole world.
On the Hail Mary beads:
For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us, and on the whole
world.
Concluding prayer:
Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us, and on
the whole world (three times).
Eternal God, in Whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion inexhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us, that in difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit ourselves to your holy will, which is love and mercy itself.
