A new film on the life of St. Faustina Kowalska, the Polish nun whose visions of Jesus led to the Divine Mercy devotion, will debut Oct. 28 on more than 700 screens across the United States. There will be a second showing Dec. 2.
The 90-minute movie, "Love and Mercy: Faustina," will
also have some features about St. Faustina surrounding it, according to Marian
Father Chris Alar, who is seen on-screen during the film.
Shot in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Mexico, Colombia and the
United States, "Love and Mercy: Faustina" was filmed twice, with the
actors speaking in English or Polish, said Father Alar in a recent interview from
his native Michigan, where he was giving a retreat. "That makes it fairly
unique," he added.
The movie was directed by Michal Kondrat, who may be familiar to
some Catholics as the director of "Two Crowns," a 2017 film biography
of St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish priest who died in a Nazi concentration camp
during World War II.
Father Alar said Kondrat had read the diaries of St. Faustina and
was interested in developing a film based on the life of another Polish saint.
The filmmaker approached the Marians of the Immaculate Conception
— Poland's first native-founded religious order for men back in 1670 — which as
a congregation has a special devotion to St. Faustina. It was a member of this
order who weaved his way through Nazi- and Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe to
journey to the United States and spread the word of the nun, for whom he had
been her spiritual director.
After some initial storyboards, the Marians brought out a documentary
on St. Faustina the congregation had produced in the 1980s, "Divine Mercy:
No Escape," to flesh out added details, Father Alar said.
He added news of the Divine Mercy devotion — which is simply
"love in action" — is "great and powerful and incredibly
necessary," because St. Faustina was told by Jesus the message for the end
times: "'If you don't pass through the doors of my mercy, you must pass
through the doors of justice.' Very few people are aware of it. Even
Catholics."
Father Alar called the Divine Mercy devotion "technically,
the fastest grassroots movement in the history of the church, and its growth
has been phenomenal.
"Compared to other movements in the church, like the Sacred
Heart, it's incredible what has been done in such a short period of time,"
he noted. "That being said, it still is not known by many people, because
many people are not practicing their faith. If they were practicing their
faith, they'd hear about it in church."
Father Alar wanted to caution potential viewers about one theme
the runs through part of "Love and Mercy: Faustina" they may find
problematic: the suicide of the painter who, at St. Faustina's direction,
painted the image of Jesus with red and white rays emanating from his heart to
represent the blood and water that flowed from his side after being pierced in
his side during his crucifixion.
The painter, Eugene Kazimierowski, was indeed a Mason, as the
film noted, "but he converted" before being called upon to paint the
Divine Mercy image, Father Alar said. It is also true that he painted himself
as Judas, but " not because he was siding with Judas and wanting to betray
Christ, but because he was a sinner and wanted to repent of his sins."
As for the suicide, "what isn't said in the movie, not out
of despair or lack of trust in God's mercy (did he kill himself). The Nazis
were coming, and he was for sure in an area that the Nazis were occupying and
he would have been taken prisoner," Father Alar said. "And he had
information about different things that the Nazis knew he knew. He knew for
sure he would have been taken, detained and tortured. It's never a good
decision to take your life, but one that he did fully and freely of his own
free will."
Find the movie
To find a nearby theater and to order tickets, go to fathomevents.com/events/faustina-love-and-mercy.
This story has been updated.