OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL HELP

 Day 48: June 27


The name of Our Lady of Perpetual Help derives from one of the most famous of all pictures of Mary, an icon of the fourteenth century painted on walnut wood perhaps in Crete; from where it was thought to have been stolen by an Italian merchant and brought to Rome.

It was venerated, famous for miracles in the Roman Church of Saint Matthew, in charge of the Irish Augustinians for a century, when the church was destroyed by fire. The picture was saved, however, and in 1866 it was set up in the Redemptorist Church of Saint Alphonsus, on the site of Saint Matthew’s. In the following year it was crowned. Since then numberless copies and reproductions of the icons have gone all over the world, some of them themselves wonder-working.

Two angels in the picture, Michael and Gabriel, are showing the instruments of the passion to the Child, who clings to the Mother’s hand, shaking loose a sandal. The Mother reassuringly holds tightly to the Child’s hand.

One cannot look at the picture without being struck by the anxious, pained expression on the face of Our Blessed Mother. On the child’s face is seen the same shrinking fear He had during His agony in the garden – a shrinking fear not incompatible with a perfect resignation to God’s will. And in His fear He turns to His Mother for help.

What does the loosened sandal mean? All babies manage to kick off their shoes, and the Christ child was a perfectly human baby. There is a meaning in his act, however, for His is more than just a human baby. If it were not for this loosened sandal, the picture would not be a complete one. In the Old Law, the putting off of the shoe meant (1) the yielding of one’s right to another, (2) the wish to be treated as a servant or a captive, (3) readiness for reproach or infamy.

As the Child looks at the frightening instruments, and clings to His Mother’s hand, the little shoe slips from His baby foot and He says His Fiat – “Not my will but Thine be done.” We may even imagine the two archangels going back to heaven and being asked, “What did He say?” – and their reply would be something like this: “He was very frightened and clung to His Mother, but He took of His little shoe.”


St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"There is a special presence of Mary as a perpetual visitation, whenever there are souls of precursors, souls of disciples to be educated and sanctified, as in the house of Elizabeth, as with the twelve [Apostles] in the three years of Jesus' public life, and lastly as in the upper room."

(Opera Omnia, vol. XXV, no. 175, quoted in: Louis Caputo, Justinian Anthology, Vocationist Editions, Palisades Park, 2013, p. 72)


Prayer to Our Lady of Perpetual Help

O Mother of Perpetual Help,

grant that I may ever invoke thy most powerful name,

which is the safeguard of the living and the salvation of the dying.

O Purest Mary, O Sweetest Mary,

let thy name henceforth be ever on my lips.

Delay not, O Blessed Lady,

to help me whenever I call on thee, for, in all my needs,

in all my temptations I shall never cease to call on thee,

ever repeating thy sacred name, Mary, Mary.


O what consolation, what sweetness,

what confidence, what emotion fill my soul

when I pronounce thy sacred name,

or even only think of thee.

I thank God for having given thee,

for my good, so sweet, so powerful, so lovely a name.

But I will not be content with merely pronouncing thy name:

let my love for thee prompt me ever to hail thee,

Mother of Perpetual Help.

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