Our Lady of Perpetual Help
Feast Day: June 27
Our Lady of Perpetual Help is one of the most beloved titles and images of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the entire Catholic world. The sacred image, a Byzantine icon of the type known as the Hodegetria or She who shows the Way, depicts the Mother of God holding the Child Jesus on her left arm while He clings to her hands with both of His. On either side of the Child appear the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, bearing the instruments of the Passion. The Christ Child, who has seen in a vision the cross, the nails, and the lance that await Him, turns to His Mother for comfort, and in so doing has lost one of His sandals in the urgency of His movement toward her arms.
The image is believed to have originated in Crete and was brought to Rome by a merchant around 1499. It was entrusted to the Church of San Matteo in Merulana, where it was venerated for nearly three centuries and became the occasion of many miraculous favours. When the French army under Napoleon occupied Rome, the church was destroyed in 1798 and the image disappeared, passing through several hands and eventually being placed in the private chapel of the Augustinian Fathers at their church of Santa Maria in Posterula.
In 1865 the Redemptorist Fathers recovered the image and enshrined it in their Church of Sant'Alfonso on the Esquiline Hill, close to the original site of San Matteo. Pope Pius IX formally entrusted the image to the Redemptorists with the words, Make Our Lady of Perpetual Help known throughout the world. The Fathers obeyed with great zeal, and from Rome the devotion spread to every corner of the globe. Today there are few Catholic parishes in the world that do not have a copy of the image, and the Wednesday novena in honour of Our Lady of Perpetual Help is among the most widely attended of all Catholic devotional services.
The theology behind the image is one of tender maternal intercession. The Child Jesus seeks refuge with His Mother; she in turn shows Him to the faithful and intercedes for them with the authority of a mother and the love of the Queen of Heaven. She is perpetual help because her help is always available, always efficacious, and always directed toward the eternal good of those who seek it. Innumerable graces, conversions, and miraculous cures have been attributed to her intercession under this title, and her image has brought consolation to millions of suffering souls throughout the world.