ST. FAUSTINA'S CONFESSOR

 

On the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we present a future saint who had a great devoton to  this mysery of our Lord.

At the end of 2024, Archbishop Marek Jędraszewski, of Krakow, announced the initiation of the beatification and canonization process for the SERVANT of GOD, FATHER JOZEF ANDRASZ, SJ, who was the spiritual director, and confessor of St. Faustina Kowalska, the Apostle of Divine Mercy.

He was  born in 1891 in Wielopole, Nowy Sącz County, Poland, one of ten children. From an early age, he felt a calling to the priesthood and religious life. At the age of nearly fifteen, he entered the Society of Jesus and was ordained a priest in 1919. He was a man of many talents with an exceptional work ethic devoting himself entirely to serving God and his fellow men and women. He was a sought-after preacher and retreat leader. 

Father Andrasz worked in the Apostleship of Prayer publishing house in Poland and was responsible for the publication of 41 volumes in the series  “The Library of the Internal Life”, which were mostly translations of great works on asceticism.

 He was the editor-in-chief of the popular Catholic paper "The Messenger of the Heart of Jesus". He was also national manager of the Apostleship of Prayer and of Catholic Action for Family Consecration. (50 years later my own spiritual director in college, also a Jesuit, was dedicated to the Sacred Heart, writing a book on the encyclical Haurietas   Aquas). 

Father Andrasz’s greatest achievement in this field was the consecration not only of families or parishes but also the whole nation to the Heart of God, which took place on 21 October 1951.

In 1933, at the convent in Krakow-Łagiewniki, Father Andrasz first met St. Faustina. He served as her spiritual director for the last three years of her life (She died on October 5, 1938). From the beginning, he believed in the authenticity of her encounters with Christ, giving her his unwavering support. He neither blocked nor rejected her inspirations. He did not make decisions instead of her, yet he accompanied her, helped her to discern the work of God. He saw to it that she did not go astray, advised her to pray and offer mortifications for the intention so that he was able to discern this work well.

Not only did he hear the confessions of St. Faustina, but also of many persons who led a deep spiritual and mystical life, for instance Mother Zofia Tajber, the foundress of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Most Holy Soul of Christ. 

In her Diary, St. Faustina expressed profound gratitude for his spiritual guidance, which she regarded as essential to her journey. She called him “a spiritual leader”, “a pillar of light” that lit her way to close union with God and she regretted that there were so few such priests. She wrote that this was a priest filled with the spirit of God, a holy and an enlightened man. St. Faustina came to know how very pleasing he was to God and she had respect for him, as for a saint. Every day after Holy Communion she thanked Jesus for the priest and asked for the light of the Holy Spirit for him so that he could discern God’s plans for her well.

 She mentioned Father Andrasz many times in her Diary :

 "It is a strange thing that, until I met Father Andrasz, confessors could neither understand me nor set my mind at rest concerning these matters [the revelations]" (p.111).

 "I am very grateful to the Lord for having given me an enlightened priest" (p. 1596)

 In the “Diary” she also wrote what Jesus said about Father Andrasz. He called him a friend of His Heart, His representative, a veil behind which He was hiding. He told St. Faustina that He had chosen him Himself so that she did not go astray. He told her that he spoke through his lips and that his word was God’s will for her. “Be sure in the depths of your soul  that I speak through his mouth, and I want you to open up your soul to him as simply and as sincerely as you do to Me. Once again I say to you, My daughter, know that his word is My will for you”  (Diary 979).

The moment when St. Faustina felt most that Jesus identified Himself with Father Andrasz, was when she was ill in the hospital and cried because she had not been able to go to confession for three weeks. Then Father Andrasz came into her room and, without saying a word, sat down to hear her confession. St. Faustina said everything that weighed upon her heart, and when he was giving her absolution, she saw that it was not Father Andrasz but Jesus Himself. At the end of the story she wrote that Jesus heard confessions in the same way that priests did.

 In 1943 Father Andrasz initiated public devotion to the Divine Mercy in the Divine Mercy Sanctuary in Kraków. The same year, under his direction, a popular version of the Image of Divine Mercy, since exhibited in the sanctuary, was painted by Adolf Hyła.

Father Andrasz died on February 1, 1963, in Krakow. His funeral drew a large gathering of the faithful, a testament to the widespread respect and admiration he had earned throughout his life.

 It was on his initiative that memories of Sister Faustina were gathered, while his booklet “Divine Mercy, We Trust in Thee”, which promotes the devotion to the Divine Mercy in the forms conveyed by Saint Faustina, has been translated into many languages. He was also the author of the first biographies of the Apostle of the Divine Mercy.