Why a nine-year-old walked home from church by herself

ŚWINICE WARCKIE, Poland, 1914 AD — Saint Faustina Kowalska grew up on a small farm in Poland. When she was little, she used to get up in the night to kneel and pray. Her mother, Marianna Kowalska, tried to stop her. She warned that a child who kept getting up in the middle of the night would go mad. St. Faustina told her mother: “Mummy, it must be an angel that wakes me up for prayers.”

St. Faustina was the third child of Stanisław and Marianna Kowalski. She was baptised Helena, and at home everyone called her Helenka. The family farmed a few acres at Głogowiec, a village in the parish of Świnice Warckie. It was far from any town or main road. This part of Poland was ruled by Russia then. There was no school at Świnice Warckie for the children to go to.

Her mother couldn’t read. She taught her children the faith anyway, and right from wrong.

Her father, Stanisław Kowalski, could read. On Sunday afternoons he took the Lives of the Saints down from the bookcase. Then he read it aloud to the family. Early in the morning Stanisław Kowalski sang prayers and hymns. Marianna Kowalska scolded him for waking the children. He answered that the children had to learn from their earliest years that God was the most important.

St. Faustina learned the stories of hermits and missionaries by heart. The next day she was out in the pasture with the cattle. There she told the stories word for word to her brothers and sisters and anyone else who was there. Some were about hermits who lived on nothing but roots, berries and forest honey.

Once St. Faustina put on her mother’s old clothes and went from house to house as a beggar. She gave the money she collected to the parish priest for the poor.

In 1912 AD, when she was seven, St. Faustina was at Vespers, the Church’s evening prayer. It was in St. Casimir’s, the parish church at Świnice Warckie. The consecrated Host stood on the altar in a monstrance. At that service she knew for the first time, beyond doubt, that God loved her.

There too she first felt called to be a nun. She told her brothers and sisters that she would enter a convent when she grew up. They laughed at her.

Her First Communion

In 1914 AD, when she was nine, it was St. Faustina’s turn to make her First Communion. All the Kowalski children made theirs at St. Casimir’s. Her mother was the one who had got her ready for it. The parish priest gave her Communion.

On the way home she walked by herself, apart from the other girls. A friend asked her why she was walking alone. St. Faustina answered: “I’m not alone, I’m walking with Jesus.”