Hello, I'm Father Joe Roche of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception. Thank you for

joining us as we continue with our year-long journey, reading the diary of St. Maria Faustina

Kavalska from beginning to end. Today we have a note from Father Sopocho to Sister Faustina

from December of 1936. Reverend Sister, I hasten to send you my most sincere wishes for Christmas and the New Year.

Above all, I wish you good health and ever more abundant divine graces

to obtain, by your entreaties, God's mercy for the world.

Sharing the wafer with you is a symbol of peace and heavenly love.

I commend myself to your prayers.

Reverend Mihau Sopochko, Vilnius, 24th of December, 1936.

Father Sopochko returns St. Faustina's greetings for Christmas in the New Year in a very short note.

He prays for her health and that God would pour out many graces on her so that she'd have the strength to continue interceding for the world seeking God's mercy.

He shares the traditional Polish Christmas wafer with her.

A small wafer was inserted into the letter.

This is a rectangular, it's like a Eucharistic host, but it's not consecrated, and it's very traditional for the

polls to break a piece and share it with one another as they give Christmas greetings each year.

He calls it a symbol of place, of peace, and heavenly love, and he asks for her prayers.

Now, since this was such a short note, I'd like to take

this opportunity to say a few things about Father Sopochko. Like St. Faustina, he was one of ten

children. He also had to work in the fields when he was growing up and his family made sure that

he received at least an elementary education at first.

Eventually it became clear that he would be able to go on and study for the priesthood.

He was 17 years older than St. Faustina, so at the end of her life, when she was 33, he was 50.

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