Anna Schäffer
| Born | 18 February 1882, Mindelstetten, Bavaria, Germany |
|---|---|
| Died | 5 October 1925, Mindelstetten, Bavaria, Germany |
| State of life | Lay virgin and Franciscan tertiary |
| Religious institute or church | Third Order of Saint Francis |
| Ecclesial status | Saint; canonized on 21 October 2012 |
| Recognition | Beatified on 7 March 1999; canonized by Pope Benedict XVI |
Anna Schäffer was a German lay virgin and member of the Third Order of Saint Francis whose long disability became a vocation of Eucharistic prayer, spiritual correspondence, and accompaniment of people who sought counsel in suffering.
Overview
Anna Schäffer (February 18, 1882 – October 5, 1925) was a German woman who lived in Mindelstetten in Bavaria. She was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on October 21, 2012.
Life
Origins and formation
Anna Schäffer was born at Mindelstetten in Bavaria on 18 February 1882, the third of eight children of Michael Schäffer, a carpenter, and Therese Forster. She was baptized on the day of her birth and received the ordinary Catholic formation of her parish and household. Her father died while she was still young, leaving the family in restricted circumstances. Anna left school and worked in domestic service, hoping to earn the dowry then commonly required for admission to a religious congregation. A desire for missionary religious life shaped her adolescence, but the course of her vocation changed through events she had neither chosen nor romanticized. Her early prayer, parish life, work, and care for her family remained the human foundation of the later hidden apostolate for which she became known.
Vocation and ministry
On 4 February 1901, while working in a laundry at Stammham, Anna slipped as she tried to repair a stove pipe and fell into a vat of boiling lye. Both legs were gravely burned. More than thirty operations and prolonged hospital treatment failed to restore her health, and in 1902 she returned to Mindelstetten dependent upon her mother and confined largely to bed. The accident closed the path to the active congregation she had imagined, not the baptismal call to holiness. She joined the Third Order of Saint Francis, received Holy Communion frequently through her pastor, embroidered when able, wrote letters, and welcomed visitors. After a fall in 1923 her condition worsened and paralysis affected her legs. She died at home on 5 October 1925 after receiving the sacraments.
Christian witness and legacy
Spirituality
Anna's mature spirituality centered on Jesus Christ in the Eucharist and on participation in his Passion as a member of his Mystical Body. Catholic teaching does not call injury good, deny the duty to relieve pain, or measure holiness by the severity of illness. Anna's witness lies in the grace-enabled freedom with which she offered an unavoidable condition in charity, while continuing to receive medical care and to value the service of others. Her letters joined confidence in divine providence with concrete attention to correspondents, and her membership in the Franciscan third order gave an ecclesial form to poverty, prayer, and penance. Reported mystical experiences belong to her documented spiritual life, but the canonization does not oblige Catholics to accept every private detail as public revelation. The Eucharist, Scripture, the sacraments, and charity remain the controlling realities.
Work and historical significance
Anna founded no institution and held no public office. Her apostolate developed through hundreds of letters, conversations at her bedside, handiwork, intercession, and the example of a laywoman whose apparent social uselessness did not diminish her baptismal dignity. People from the region sought counsel and consolation, while her parish priest brought the Eucharist and helped preserve testimony about her life. Her history therefore belongs to Catholic reflection on disability, lay vocation, spiritual friendship, redemptive suffering, and the apostolate of prayer. Responsible presentation avoids turning disabled people into instruments for the inspiration of others or implying that they must display serenity to possess dignity. Anna's sanctity affirms instead that grace can make a severely restricted life spiritually fruitful and that the sick remain active members of the Church who give as well as receive.
Cause and veneration
Recognition and present status
The Diocese of Regensburg opened the formal inquiry into Anna's virtues and reputation for holiness in 1973. After the Roman study of the evidence, Pope Saint John Paul II authorized the decree recognizing her heroic virtues on 11 July 1995 and beatified her on 7 March 1999. A further healing attributed to her intercession passed the medical, theological, and cardinalatial examinations required for canonization. Pope Benedict XVI canonized Anna Schäffer in Saint Peter's Square on 21 October 2012. Her exact present title is Saint Anna Schäffer, lay virgin. Canonization definitively permits universal public veneration and proposes her Christian life to the whole Church; it does not canonize every remembered saying, diagnose, devotional report, or interpretation advanced by later admirers.[1][2]
Liturgical and devotional scope
Saint Anna Schäffer may be publicly venerated throughout the Catholic Church. The Dicastery records her liturgical memory on 5 October, the anniversary of her death, and she is celebrated in the Diocese of Regensburg and other proper calendars that lawfully include her. She has no obligatory memorial on the universal General Roman Calendar, so the rank, texts, and precedence of an observance depend on the competent calendar. Pilgrimage to Mindelstetten, approved prayers, and requests for her intercession are legitimate expressions of devotion. Such devotion should lead to the Eucharist, works of mercy, defense of the dignity of disabled and chronically ill people, and practical support for caregivers; it must never encourage refusal of ordinary medical treatment or portray preventable suffering as desirable in itself.[3][4]
Childhood
Schäffer's father, a carpenter, died at the age of 40, leaving his family in great poverty. Anna dropped out of school and worked as a maid from the age of fourteen, hoping eventually to be able to enter a religious order.[5] But with family obligations she could barely make ends meet. In 1898, she had a vision of Christ in which she was told that she was destined to endure long and painful suffering.[6][7]
On February 4, 1901, while working at a laundry, Schäffer slipped and fell while reattaching a stovepipe and boiled her legs in the washing machine.[6] She was taken to hospital, but nothing could be done about the painful burns. More than thirty surgical operations followed, and the wounds had to be carefully dressed, which also caused much pain. Despite the constant care of her doctor, Dr. Waldin, skin grafts did not succeed and Schäffer became completely immobile. She was therefore forced to abandon her longtime dream of entering a religious order.[8] Her mother was to care for her until the end of her life.
Works and later life
Schäffer never lost her optimism and became even more devoted to her faith while enduring constant suffering. She was often unable to sleep, but continued to express her adoration of Christ and her veneration of Mary. She had a special devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. A local abbot would bring her the Eucharist daily. She 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!"[9]
She considered her suffering, her writing, and her ability to knit clothes for her friends the three "keys" by which she could enter Heaven. Her beatific attitude made her a beloved figure in town and people would often visit her to hear her comforting words of faith.[9] A French writer says of her that "those who were the most prejudiced against Anna did not fail to be impressed by her patience and her kindness." Even her irreligious brother eventually came to her support.[10]
From 1910 mystical phenomena developed around her, including what could be described as stigmata, which she did her best to conceal from the public,[11] and occasional waking visions which made her ecstatic.[12] These developments brought no change in her attitude, though: she remained selfless, and promised prayers and letters for anyone who wanted them.[6]
In 1925, she was diagnosed with colon cancer, and her paralysis spread to her spine, making it difficult to speak or write. On the morning of October 5, she received her final Holy Communion, and suddenly spoke: "Jesus, I live for you!" She died minutes later.[13] At her funeral many already believed that they had known a saint.[9]
Beatification and canonization
After her death it became common to visit her grave to have prayers answered. Since 1929, more than 15,000 miracles attributed to such prayers have been reported. In 1998, 551 miracles allegedly obtained through her intercession were recorded in the parish of Mindelstetten.[10]
Schäffer was proposed for beatification in 1973. Over 20,000 letters and testimonies were collected as part of a detailed examination of her case.[14]
During her beatification, 7 March 1999, Pope John Paul II said: "If we look to Blessed Anna Schäffer, we read in her life a living commentary on what Saint Paul wrote to the Romans: 'Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us' (Rom. 5:5). She most certainly was not spared the struggle to abandon herself to the will of God. But she was given to grow in the correct understanding that weakness and suffering are the pages on which God writes His Gospel... Her sickbed became the cradle of an apostolate that extended to the whole world."[10]
In 2012, her notebook, entitled Thoughts and memories of my life of illness and my longing for the eternal homeland, was translated into English.[8] On 21 October 2012, she was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI.[15]
See also
References
- Back to citation Dicastery profile of Saint Anna Schäffer — The official profile documents Anna's birth and Baptism, accident, disability, Franciscan commitment, Eucharistic life, diocesan inquiry, heroic virtues, beatification, canonization, and 5 October memory.
- Back to citation Holy See canonization biography of Anna Schäffer — The Holy See biography supplies the principal family, work, accident, medical, spiritual, cause, and miracle chronology used to distinguish documented events from later devotional retellings.
- Back to citation Benedict XVI homily for the 2012 canonizations — The papal homily belongs to the liturgical act that enrolled Anna among the Saints and interprets her acceptance of incurable illness through union with Christ rather than through denial of suffering.
- Back to citation Dicastery guidance on remembering holiness — Official Dicastery guidance distinguishes Saint, Blessed, Venerable, and Servant of God and explains the corresponding limits on public cult, liturgical observance, images, relics, and devotional presentation.
- Back to citation "Eine Frau des Leidens auf einer Stufe mit Petrus Archived 2012-10-24 at the Wayback Machine". Donaukurier, October 21, 2012.
- Back to citation occurrence 6.0 Back to citation occurrence 6.1 Back to citation occurrence 6.2 "Apostolate of Suffering and Reparation Was Call Given to Bl. Anna Schaffer, German Laywoman" L'Osservatore Romano, March 10, 1999
- Back to citation "Kościół ma siedmioro nowych świętych" Deon.pl, October 21, 2012
- Back to citation occurrence 8.0 Back to citation occurrence 8.1 Georg Franz X. Schwager. Anna Schäffer – Thoughts and Memories of my Life of Illness – and My Longing for the Eternal Homeland. Regensburg: Schnell und Steiner, 2012. ISBN 3795426243
- Back to citation occurrence 9.0 Back to citation occurrence 9.1 Back to citation occurrence 9.2 Georg Franz X. Schwager. „Jesus Christus – die Sonne meines Lebens“[]. Die Tagespost, October 19, 2012.
- Back to citation occurrence 10.0 Back to citation occurrence 10.1 Back to citation occurrence 10.2 Abbot Antoine Marie, Abbaye Saint Joseph de Clairval. Spiritual Newsletter, February 2, 2003 Archived March 8, 2014, at the Wayback Machine.
- Back to citation Rommel C. Lontayao. "Blessed Anna Schaffer: A life of pain and suffering[]". Manila Times, January 22, 2012.
- Back to citation Radio Vaticana. "The canonization of Anna Schäffer: Interview with postulator". October 20, 2012.
- Back to citation Georg Franz X. Schwager. "Anna Schäffer of Mindelstetten Archived March 8, 2014, at the Wayback Machine" Municipality of Mindelstetten.
- Back to citation DAPD News Agency. "Der lange Weg zur Heiligkeit". Die Welt, October 12, 2012.
- Back to citation Breslin, Carole (3 October 2017). "Catholic Heroes... St. Anna Schaffer". TheWandererPress.com. Retrieved 11 January 2019.