By Sister Hosea Rupprecht
Catholics can experience the gentleness of God through learning more about Saint Faustina and the devotion to the Divine Mercy by watching the 2019 docudrama Love and Mercy: Faustina (Kondrat-Media), written and directed by award-winning Polish filmmaker Michal Kondrat.
The movie’s style, combining live-action storytelling with interviews and narration, makes it a compelling look at how the devotion to Divine Mercy began and spread throughout the world, bringing millions into contact with the love and clemency of Jesus, through the experience of St Faustina Kowalska (played by Kamila Kaminska).
When Helena, as her family knew Faustina, asked her father’s (Piotr Cyrwus) permission to enter a convent upon finishing school, he refused. Not wishing to defy him, she started work as a housekeeper – but when she was 19 years old, she saw a vision of Jesus (Bartosz Ziemniak) during a summer dance party.
He told her to go to Warsaw and enter religious life. Putting doubts aside, she did as instructed.
On the evening of 22 February 1931, Sister Faustina was in her convent cell when Jesus came to her and asked her to paint an image of what she saw and to write: “Jesus, I trust in You” at the bottom. Jesus also told her to search for a confessor.
It wasn’t until two years later in Vilnius, Lithuania, that she met Father Michael Sopocko (Maciej Malysa), who became her spiritual director. He instructed her to share everything about her experiences with Jesus in a diary.
Sr Faustina put the job of finding a painter for the image requested by Jesus into Fr Sopocko’s hands.
In 1934, he hired Eugeniusz Kazimirowski (Janusz Chabior), who worked with Faustina on the original painting. There were moments of frustration for both of them as Kazimirowski struggled to capture what Faustina was describing to her satisfaction.
After Faustina’s death in 1938, it was up to Fr Sopocko to further the devotion to the Divine Mercy and attempt to fulfil all of Jesus’ requests, including establishing a feast of Divine Mercy for the universal church.
Love and Mercy: Faustina takes advantage of interviews with many of the members of the clergy involved in the furtherance either of the devotion or of Sr Faustina’s and Fr Sopocko’s causes for canonisation.
The influence of the Divine Mercy devotion throughout the church is explained by some of the Marian Fathers who direct the National Divine Mercy Shrine in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
An especially fascinating sequence explores how scientists have compared the original painting with the image on the Shroud of Turin.
The opening of the movie, although beautifully filmed, tends toward the sensational in its description of salvation history and the effects of original sin. The shift from quoting the Bible to commentary could be confusing to some viewers.
Sister Rupprecht, a Daughter of Saint Paul, is a guest reviewer for Catholic News Service.
The film contains an off-screen suicide. The Catholic New Service classification is A-II – adults and adolescents. Not rated by the Motion Picture Association of America.