Do you wish you knew more about the story and spirituality of Saint Faustina? Maybe you find yourself drawn to the message of Divine Mercy, but don’t know where to start when it comes to learning about this Catholic devotion.
Susan Tassone has the perfect book for you.
The Catholic author spent time praying with Faustina so that you can draw closer to her, too.
“I’m so pleased and grateful that the result is a book that doesn’t just have ‘a little something for everybody.’ It has a lot of something for all of us, no matter how familiar—or unfamiliar— we are with the Diary of this great mystic and visionary,” Susan Tassone explains in the introduction to her latest book, Day by Day With Saint Faustina.
You can pick up a copy of Day by Day With Saint Faustina at your local Catholic bookstore or online through Sophia Institute Press. But before you grab a copy and begin your own retreat, journey, and pilgrimage, here are a few ways that praying with Faustina will impact and improve your interior life.
1. Grow closer to Christ in the Eucharist
Receiving Jesus in the Eucharist was incredibly important to Faustina’s interior life, and she can help you develop a deeper love for Christ in the Eucharist, too.
“The most solemn moment of my life is the moment when I receive Holy Communion,” she wrote in her diary.
2. Develop a deeper daily prayer life
“Jesus gave me to understand how a soul should be faithful to prayer despite torments, dryness, and temptations, because often times the realization of God’s great plans depend mainly on such prayer,” Faustina penned in her the pages of her diary. “If we do not persevere in such prayer, we frustrate what the Lord wanted to do through us or within us.”
3. Get along better with others (including those closest to you!)
“Jesus, help me to go through life doing good to everyone,” Faustina wrote in her diary.
Often, those who we love the most are also the people who get on our nerves the most. But Faustina prayed for everyone (the living and the dead!), and we can learn to do the same.
4. Learn the secrets of sanctity
What does Faustina’s secret to sanctity look like? Small, daily actions.
“I strive for the greatest perfection possible in order to be useful to the Church,” she wrote. “I have come to understand how great an influence I have on other souls, not by heroic deeds, as these are striking in themselves, but by small actions like a movement of the hand, a look, and many other things too numerous to mention, which have an effect on and reflect in the souls of others.”
5. Trust in God and ask for his help
“Oh, how good it is to call on Jesus for help during a conversation. Oh, how good it is, during a moment of peace, to beg for actual graces. I fear most of all this sort of confidential conversation; there is need of much divine light at times like this, in order to speak with profit, both for the other person’s soul, and for one’s own as well. God, however, comes to our aid; but we have to ask him for it,” Faustina wrote.
6. Find the Lord in times of darkness
“O humdrum days, filled with darkness, I look upon you with a solemn and festive eye,” Faustina wrote in her diary. “How great and solemn is the time that gives us the chance to gather merits for eternal heaven! I understand how the saints made use of it.”
7. Love the Blessed Mother even more
“I desire, my dearly beloved daughter, that you practice the three virtues that are dearest to me and most pleasing to God. The first is humility, humility and once again humility; the second virtue, purity; the third virtue, love of God. As my daughter, you must especially radiate with these virtues,” Our Lady said when she appeared to Faustina.
Faustina responded to the call of Our Lady, and she can help you respond to the Blessed Mother, too. “My heart became so wonderfully attracted to these virtues; and I practiced them faithfully. They are as though engraved on my heart,” she wrote in her diary.
8. Use your suffering to help others
“True love is measured by the thermometer of suffering,” the saint wrote in her diary. “Jesus, I thank you for the little daily crosses. . . for poor health and loss of strength, for self denial, for our dying to myself, for lack of recognition in everything, for the upsetting of all my plans. Thank you, Jesus, for interior sufferings, for dryness of spirit, for terrors, fears and incertitude, for the darkness and the deeper interior night.”
Faustina recognized that every suffering, even small daily inconveniences, provided opportunities to unite herself with Christ’s passion and death.
9. Take advantage of the spiritual powerhouse that is the Sacrament of Reconciliation
Confession is an incredible place to encounter the mercy of Christ. Faustina shared an examination of conscience that Jesus spoke with her about during their conversations.
“My daughter, in this meditation, consider the love of neighbors,” Christ said. “Is your love for your neighbor guided by my love? Do you pray for your enemies? Do you wish well to those who have, in one way or another, caused you sorrow or offended you? Know that whatever good you do to any soul, I accept it as if you had done it to me.”
10. Become a person of mercy
Faustina regularly asked the Lord to help her grow in her ability to show mercy to others.
“O my Jesus, teach me to open the bosom of mercy and love to everyone who asks for it,” she wrote in her diary. “Jesus, my commander, teach me so that all my prayers and deeds may bear the seal of your mercy.”
Make sure to get a copy of Day by Day With Saint Faustina at your local Catholic bookstore or online through Sophia Institute Press. Then get ready for how Faustina’s spirituality will impact your own interior life!
