St. Faustina had a difficult time when she was a novice, experiencing both interior and exterior forms of suffering.
She prayed to a variety of saints for help, but did not receive any consolation.
Then she prayed to St. Thérèse of Lisieux and her novena was very successful.
The dream
St. Faustina was a novice in the 1920s, and St. Thérèse was canonized in 1925, but St. Faustina knew of her and her autobiography even before she entered the convent.
She also likely heard many of the favors that St. Thérèse was known for and decided to pray a novena to the Little Flower in hopes that she would intercede for her before God.
St. Faustina writes about the dream in her Diary, explaining how she saw St. Thérèse on the fifth day of her novena:
On the fifth day of the novena, I dreamed of St. Thérèse, but it was as if she were still
living on earth. She hid from me the fact that she was a saint and began to comfort me,
saying that I should not be worried about this matter, but should trust more in God. She
said, “I suffered greatly, too,” but I did not quite believe her and said, “It seems to me that
you have not suffered at all.”
