The priest who wasn't sure the sister had seen Jesus

KRAKÓW-ŁAGIEWNIKI, Poland, September 26, 1938 AD — In the first half of 1934 AD, Blessed Michał Sopoćko, a priest in Vilnius, posed for a painter as Jesus. A sister named Saint Faustina Kowalska came to the studio once or twice a week. She told the painter how Jesus looked. She knew because she had seen Him.

Father Sopoćko had met her in June 1933 AD, while he was hearing confessions at her convent in Vilnius. From then on he was her confessor. St. Faustina wrote in her diary that she knew him from a vision. She heard in her soul: “This is My faithful servant; he will help you carry out My will here on Earth.”

St. Faustina had written down that Jesus asked for a picture of Him, painted the way she had seen Him. She wrote that He also asked for a Feast of Divine Mercy.

Father Sopoćko was slow to believe her. He said later: “More out of curiosity rather than conviction as to the authenticity of Sister Faustina’s visions, I decided to have the picture painted.”

When the picture was finished, St. Faustina cried. The Jesus in it was not as beautiful as the one she had seen. In April 1935 AD, Father Sopoćko had it hung for three days at the Gates of Dawn, the city’s shrine of Our Lady. It was the first time people saw it.

A knock she didn’t hear

In the spring of 1936 AD, St. Faustina moved to her order’s convent in Kraków. She was sick with tuberculosis in her lungs and her digestive tract.

After Easter in 1938 AD, her superiors sent her to the city hospital at Prądnik. A nursing sister told her she was too exhausted to receive Holy Communion. St. Faustina wrote in her diary that a Seraph then came to her bed. The Seraph brought her Holy Communion for thirteen days, she wrote.

Weeks later, Father Sopoćko came to Kraków and visited her in the hospital several times. St. Faustina told him his main task was to get the Church to establish the Feast of Divine Mercy. She also told him she would soon die.

Then Father Sopoćko said goodbye and left her room. On the way out, he realised he hadn’t given her some booklets of prayers to the Divine Mercy. He turned back. When he opened her door, St. Faustina was raised in the air above her bed, praying.

Her eyes were fixed on something he couldn’t see. For some time she didn’t notice him. Father Sopoćko didn’t want to disturb her, so he was about to leave. Then St. Faustina noticed him and said she was sorry she hadn’t heard him knock or come in. He gave her the prayers and said goodbye a second time. St. Faustina said to him: “See you in heaven.”

One sentence

On September 17, St. Faustina left the hospital and went back to the infirmary at her convent in Łagiewniki, a part of Kraków. Other sisters came to see her there. St. Faustina kept them back from her bed so they wouldn’t catch tuberculosis.

On September 26, Father Sopoćko came to see her. He wrote that she did not want to talk to him, or perhaps couldn’t any longer. She said she was in communion with the Heavenly Father, he wrote. The only thing St. Faustina said to him was one sentence: “My one occupation is to live in the presence of my Heavenly Father.”

Father Sopoćko, who had been slow to believe her, wrote about that visit: “Indeed she gave the impression of a supernatural being. I no longer had any doubts that what she wrote in her diary about Holy Communion being administered to her in hospital by an angel was absolutely true.”

After their last meeting, Father Sopoćko wrote: “I felt great pain in my soul and I was embittered because I had to say goodbye to this unusual creature and because I felt so abandoned by everybody.” He also wrote that he understood he had to trust the Divine Mercy: “I had to stop being small-minded and I was to trust, trust and once again trust Him.”