The Healing Journey

September 8, 2025

Anna Rodriguez said she was a “wild child,” ready to party and willing to miss a few days’ work at Dictaphone in search of adventure on road trips with her friends. Until something changed her. More accurately, Someone changed her … it was Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, who led her to the Missionary Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament & Mary Immaculate. That was 42 years ago. Today, the Bridgeport native is mother superior of the congregation on Wordin Avenue, one of many houses in Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Africa, Mexico, the Philippines and Vietnam. She is also a facilitator in the New Day bereavement program.

Five missionary sisters work and live together in the Convent of Mary Immaculate. As part of their day — which includes a total of three hours of Eucharistic adoration — they run the Mary Immaculate Day Care Center and Pre-K for almost 50 students from the West End.

“Our charism, first and foremost, is adoration, so we try to get people to come in and visit the Lord, so they can realize who Jesus is,” she said.

Mother had a similar encounter when she was a young woman, which inspired her to leave behind her career and her boyfriend and enter the order.

She was introduced to the Missionary Sisters when she was a member of the Children of Mary at St. Anthony Church on Colorado Avenue. On the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, September 8, while they were at church, she was invited into the chapel, where she felt her calling.

“I was before the Blessed Sacrament, and I wondered, ‘What am I feeling?’” she said. Her father was also there, and she remembers asking, “Dear Lord, what am I going to do?”

She has always been a lover of animals and horses, and she immediately thought of the blinders that horses wear in the mountains near cliffs, so they can stay focused and not be distracted by things around them.

A voice told her, “Put the frame on just like you put on your horse. Look forward and not to the side … and I will be there.’”

“And that’s when I said, ‘The Lord wants me to be a sister.’”

Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament has all the answers to our questions and our problems. All we have to do is sit in silence and spend time with him.
©J Pisani

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