She wanted to see how a saint dies

KRAKÓW, October 5, 1938 AD — Sister Eufemia Traczyńska wanted to be in the room when Saint Faustina Kowalska died. She wanted to see how a saint dies. Another sister, Sister Amelia Socha, had told her that St. Faustina was bound to become a saint.

Sister Eufemia was a junior sister, still in her first years of vows. A junior sister wasn’t allowed to stay up at night beside a sister who had tuberculosis. So Sister Eufemia prayed to the souls in Purgatory to wake her when the time came.

St. Faustina was lying in the infirmary of her convent at Łagiewniki, on the southern edge of Kraków. She was thirty-three, and tuberculosis had attacked her gut as well as her lungs.

St. Faustina was born Helena Kowalska, the third of ten children. She had to leave school after three years, when her place was needed for younger children. In thirteen years in the order she worked in the kitchen, in the garden and at the gate. The other sisters in her order, the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, already thought of her as a saint.

Most of them didn’t know her secret. In February 1931 AD, Jesus appeared to St. Faustina in her room at Płock. He wore a white robe, and two rays came from His breast. Jesus asked St. Faustina to have a picture of Him painted as He had appeared, with the words “Jesus, I trust in You” beneath it. Jesus also asked for a Feast of Divine Mercy on the first Sunday after Easter.

Keep back from the bed

On September 17 St. Faustina was brought back from the hospital to the convent infirmary to wait for death. When sisters came to see her, she kept them back from the bed so that they wouldn’t catch the disease. She told one of them: “Dear Sister, take care of yourself more.”

St. Faustina was burning with fever and very thirsty. But she wouldn’t drink the water the sisters brought her. She only wet her tongue with it. When another sister asked whether she suffered much, St. Faustina answered: “Yes, I suffer a lot, but I am fine with it.”

The superior of the house, Mother Irena Krzyżanowska, came often to the infirmary. St. Faustina told her: “There will be a Feast of Divine Mercy, I see it, all I want is to do God’s will.”

In her last days St. Faustina sat up in bed and asked Mother Irena to come closer. She whispered: “Jesus wants to elevate me and make me a saint.” Mother Irena saw that St. Faustina said it very seriously, without any pride.

The wrong room

On the afternoon of October 5, the Jesuit priest who had been her confessor in Kraków came to the convent. At four o’clock St. Faustina made her last confession to him. He gave her the Sacrament of the Sick.

At supper a bell rang. The sisters left the table and went upstairs to her room to say the prayers for the dying. When the prayers were over, St. Faustina told Mother Irena that she would not die yet. The sisters went down to the evening service, and one sister stayed at the bed to keep watch.

Sister Eufemia went to bed at the usual hour and fell asleep at once. Then someone woke her: “Sister, if you want to be at the moment of Sister Faustina’s death, get up.” It was a mistake. The sister keeping watch had meant to wake Sister Amelia, and had gone to the wrong sister’s room.

Sister Eufemia woke Sister Amelia and put on her work dress and headdress. Then she ran to the infirmary, with Sister Amelia behind her. It was about eleven at night.

Sister Eufemia later wrote down what they saw as they came in: “Sister Faustina, as if, opened the eyes a bit, smiled slightly and then she bowed her head and already…” Sister Amelia said that St. Faustina had probably just died.

“I looked at Sister Amelia but I didn’t say anything, we continued to pray,” Sister Eufemia wrote. The blessed candle burned the whole time.

A moment later Mother Irena came in. “We prayed with Mother Superior a lot,” Sister Eufemia wrote.