Feast of St. Faustina & Bl. Francis Xavier Seelos

Happy feast day!  (That is, yesterday...)

St. Maria Faustina Kowalska (1905-1938)
Helena Kowalska was born in a small Polish village, the third of ten children.  She entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy shortly before her 20th birthday, receiving the habit the following year and taking the name Maria Faustina of the Most Blessed Sacrament.  Throughout the 1930s, St. Faustina received many messages and visions from Christ, Who desired her to spread the message of His Divine Mercy.  She was canonized by Bl. John Paul II on April 30, 2000.  The Chaplet and Novena of Divine Mercy are the most widely-known of the revelations she received; the full text of her diary can be found here.

Bl. Francis Xavier Seelos (1819-1867)
Francis Xavier Seelos was born in Bavaria, where he began seminary studies in 1847.  He joined the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (Redemptorists) a few months later, and emigrated to New York to finish his studies in their seminary.  He served German immigrants in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Cumberland, and Anapolis, and was known as a remarkable confessor and spiritual director, marked by a "cheerful holiness."  In 1960 he was proposed as a candidate for bishop of Pittsburgh, but asked to be excused from consideration; he spent the next six years as an itinerant preacher, reaching out to the poor and uneducated.  He was assigned to a parish in New Orleans in 1866, but just a few months later contracted yellow fever as he tended to the ill among his flock, and died.  He was canonized by Bl. John Paul II on April 9, 2000.  Information about his cause for canonization can be found here.

October 5 is a very special day for our family:  I have had a devotion to the Divine Mercy and St. Faustina for many years, so her feast day is close to my heart.  Shortly after we were married, a priest friend gave us a first class relic of Bl. Seelos, asking us to learn more about him and ask his intercession for our marriage.  We were so happy to learn that he shares a feast day with St. Faustina, because it gives us twice as much to celebrate!  I invite you to learn more about this holy priest, and to pray for his cause for canonization.