Icon tour seen as an invitation to prayer

An iconic image of Our Lady begins a nationwide tour this week that will see stops in every diocese in Ireland.

The ‘Pilgrim Icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help’, which was blessed yesterday by Pope Francis, was due to arrive in Dublin airport this morning (Thursday).

The icon, newly written in Poland, is to tour Ireland as a jubilee pilgrimage marking 150 years since Blessed Pius IX placed the 15th-Century icon into the care of the Redemptorists. The then Pope commissioned the order to “make her known to the world” and the following year, in December 1867, one of the earliest copies of the icon was brought to Limerick’s Redemptorist Church of Mount St Alphonsus.

The order has conducted solemn novenas in every corner of Ireland and the image will be well-known in many parish communities.

Celebrations

Jubilee celebrations for the icon, which will visit every cathedral in Ireland, began in January, when Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said the pilgrimage of the beloved icon, “will certainly bring help to many who are troubled, and will hopefully lead those of us tempted to be closed in our own security to open our hearts more fully to those in need and to change our Church for it to be more fully a true icon of God’s mercy”.

The pilgrim icon will be taken to Limerick later today, although it will not be formally received into the Church of Mount St Alphonsus until the evening of Easter Sunday.

Ceremony

The icon will visit various churches and centres in Limerick during Easter Week, before beginning the ‘Pilgrimage to the Cathedrals’ on April 4, the Feast of the Annunciation, when it will be received into Limerick’s Cathedral of St John the Baptist as part of a ceremony led by the Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Charles Brown.

The icon invites us to become “icons of mercy”, the Redemptorists said in a statement, describing the pilgrimage as “an invitation to a national festival of faith” in which we can “celebrate the truths of what God has done for us, and of who we all are, brothers and sisters of Christ, brothers and sisters of Mary of Nazareth, the Mother of God, brothers and sisters of all humankind”.

The pilgrimage will continue around the country’s cathedrals until May 15, Pentecost Sunday, when its pilgrimage will end at the Redemptorist monastery at Clonard, Belfast.

Follow the progress of the icon around Ireland at www.FollowTheIcon.ie

Photo: CNS