IFTTT Autopost 
Today’s missionary hero is unusual in many ways, not the least being the fact that most of her mission work was done from her bed. Her name was Anna.
Anna Schaffer was born on February 18, 1882 in Mindelstetten, Bavaria, Germany. When her carpenter father died, the family lived in poverty. Anna dropped out of school and became a maid to help her struggling family.
From her teenage years, Anna felt a call to be a missionary Sister one day. To help make that possible, however, she had to work to save enough money. When she was sixteen, she reported that she had a vision of Jesus. He told her that she was destined for a life of pain.
On February 4, 1901, when Anna was almost 19-years old, she slipped and fell while reattaching a stovepipe in a laundry. She fell into a machine of boiling liquid, scalding her legs. She had more than thirty operations on her legs, but these were unsuccessful. Therefore, she became bedridden until her death at the age of 43.
It was from her bed that Anna began her missionary life. For example, people of her town began visiting her, for she would comfort them. Her kindness and compassion became well-known. Also, whenever people wrote to her, she never failed to answer them with a letter of encouragement. In addition, she knit clothes for her friends. She considered her suffering, her writing, and her knitting as the “keys” to enter heaven. Her strong prayer life, love of Christ, and daily Communion were the engines making her faith solid.
Anna was also known as a mystic. When she received Holy Communion, which was every day, she would transcend her suffering. She once wrote, “I cannot write by pen how happy I am every time after Holy Communion. Ah, I forget my earthly suffering and the longing of my poor soul draws me every moment to adore my God and Savior hidden in the Blessed Sacrament.”
In 1910, Anna claimed to have several visions of St. Francis of Assisi. And like him, she was given the stigmata, the five wounds of Christ, and she often had visions that transported her into ecstasy. In addition, Anna may have had the gift of bilocation, being able to be in more than one place at a time. People reported seeing her in many different places serving the poor and sick, though her body never left her bed.
Anna died from cancer on October 5, 1925.
Pope John Paul II, at her beatification in 1973, summed up Anna’s missionary vocation in this way: “Her sickbed became the cradle of an apostolate that extended throughout the whole world.” Pope Benedict XVI canonized Anna in 2012. St. Anna Schaffer’s feast day is October 5.
St. Anna Shaeffer’s notebook is Thoughts and memories of my life of illness and my longing for the eternal homeland.
