October 5
The saints and feasts remembered on October 5, each with a short life, a Bible passage and a prayer.
Saint Faustina Kowalska
Polish nun whose diary spread devotion to God’s mercy around the world
Helena Kowalska was born in 1905 in Głogowiec, central Poland, the third of ten children in a poor farming family. She had less than three years of schooling and worked as a housemaid before joining the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in Warsaw in 1925. In 1926, in Kraków, she received the name Faustina.
She worked as a cook, gardener and doorkeeper in convents in Kraków, Płock and Vilnius. From 1931 she said that Jesus was appearing to her and asking for an image to be painted with the words “Jesus, I trust in you.” With help from her confessor, Fr. Michał Sopoćko, the first painting was made in Vilnius in 1934. At his request she kept a diary, much of it written while ill. She died of tuberculosis in Kraków on 5 October 1938, aged 33.
Her diary carried devotion to God’s mercy worldwide. John Paul II canonised her in 2000 and named the Sunday after Easter Divine Mercy Sunday.
The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion. He will not always accuse us, nor harbor His anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins or repaid us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His loving devotion for those who fear Him.
Psalm 103:8–11 · BSB
A prayer
Merciful God, you chose Faustina, a poor and simple sister, to remind the world that your mercy has no end. Give us the same trust in you when we are weak or afraid, and teach us to show others the mercy we receive from you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The lives are written with AI help from public-domain histories and checked before publishing; the prayers are ours. Bible quotations are from the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), in the public domain. How we write.