"OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL HELP – June 27 (13th Century)"

"One legend, linked with the familiar picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, is reminiscent of Mary’s never- failing solicitude. That same legend was perhaps the inspiration to the artist who has given us the one picture of Mary under this glorious title.

The story tells us that when our dear Lord was a small boy, He loved to play in the garden. One occasion the Archangels, Michael and Gabriel, appeared to Him and held before His tender eyes the instruments of His future torture – the Cross, the nails, the lance. The little Jesus, in terror, fled into the house and sought refuge in the arms of His Mother. In His haste, the Child nearly lost one of His sandals. In the picture it is seen falling from His foot. “From the meaning of the picture, we see that Our Lord Himself went to Mary, Our Mother of Perpetual Help, when He was in danger and in need.” His love for His Mother is, consequently, the source of our own love for Her, for how would love have been born in us had He not loved Her first and translated a spark of that fire into our hearts?

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 solen 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..."

To read the rest of this article that appears in the June 27, 2021 Parish Bulletin, please click here.