St. Luke Productions is bringing Faustina, Messenger of Divine Mercy, a one woman live drama to the Hamilton High School Auditorium, 3700 South Arizona Avenue, Chandler, Arizona, on Sunday, January 10, 2016, at 7:00 p.m. and it is being sponsored by Sun Lakes St. Steven’s Church Respect Life and Divine Mercy ministries.
Sister Faustina was born in 1905 as Helena Kowalska, in Glogowiec, Leczyca County, in Poland and was the third of 10 children of Stanislaw Kowalski and Marianna Kowalska. Her father was a carpenter and a peasant and the family was poor and religious. Early in life, she felt a calling to the religious life and after completing her elementary time at school, she wanted to enter the convent but her parents would not let her. When she was 16 years old, she went to work as a housekeeper in Lodz to support herself and her parents. At age 19, she experienced a vision of a suffering Jesus and was directed to join a convent, the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, in Warsaw. On April 30, 1926, she received her habit and took the religious name of Sister Maria Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament and began to receive visions from Jesus appearing to her in a white garment with rays of red and white light emanating from His heart. He asked her to paint this image with the message, “Jesus, I Trust in You” across the bottom. She was to be a nun for just over a decade, dying at the age of 33 on October 5, 1938. Faustina was canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church on April 10, 2000 having been considered a mystic and visionary. She is known and venerated within the Church as the Apostle of Divine Mercy.
Maria Vargo, a native of St. Louis, Missouri, is a Hollywood based actress who stars in the leading role of Faustina, Messenger of Divine Mercy, a touring live drama produced by St. Luke Productions. She has had numerous roles in film, television, and theater, in addition to work as an artistic director and producer for a faith-based theatre in Los Angeles and she is a singer, songwriter and voice teacher for actors. She produced a Christian CD entitled “Fire Tries Iron” and she is a Cantor at Mass. Vargo is a member of the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio artists (SAG-AFTRA), Actors Equity and the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers.
For over three decades, Saint Luke Productions has produced live dramas, feature films and television, radio and web programming on the lives of the saints and the scriptures. St. Luke Productions brings the quality of a professional production right into the local community, meeting people where they live with performances that include talented actors, theatrical lighting, sets, video imagery and original musical scores. St. Luke Productions began in 1980 when Leonardo Defilippis, a Shakespearean actor with the dream of presenting the Gospel of Luke in a new dramatic form as a one man production, would tour the northwest U.S. Churches. This was the beginning of St. Luke Productions.
For tickets or information contact Edie at St. Steven’s Church at 480-895-9266 extension 0 or [email protected]; or Anne at 480-802-9127. Tickets are $10 per person.