Erin Fox
The feast of Our Lady of Perpetual Help is coming up on June 27. This year, her feast day carries extra significance as the Redemptorists worldwide are celebrating the 150th anniversary of their relationship with the Icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. To mark the jubliee a copy of the Icon travelled to every cathedral in the 26 dioceses in Ireland. You might have been lucky to have paid it a visit! The pilgrimage ended in May but you can still honour the Mother of Perpetual Help on her feast day.
The Icon, painted on wood, shows the Blessed Mother Mary holding the Child Jesus. Archangels Michael and Gabriel, hover in the upper corners, holding the instruments of the Passion: St Michael holds the spear, the wine-soaked sponge and the crown of thorns, while St Gabriel holds the cross and the nails.
Blessed Pope Pius IX presented the Icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help to the Redemptorists for veneration in their newly-built Church of Sant’Alfonso, Rome in December 1865. The Pope instructed the Redemptorists to promote devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Help throughout the world. Just over a year later, the first copy arrived in Ireland at Mount St Alphonsus in Limerick – then the only Redemptorist church in the country.
Communities
It was from Limerick that devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Help spread in time to new Redemptorist communities, first in Dundalk and then Belfast, as well as to churches and homes throughout Ireland. Irish Redemptorists setting out off from Limerick took copies of the Icon with them to Australia and New Zealand (1882), to the Philippines (1906), to Sri Lanka (1939) and India (1940).
Devotion to of Our Lady of Perpetual Help continues to be an important part of the lives of many Irish people and others all around the world.
Every year in the month of June, the Redemptorists gather and organise novenas in Mount St Alphonsus (Limerick), Esker Monastery (Athenry, Co. Galway), Ballinasloe (Galway) and Clonard (Belfast) in honour of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.
These four nine-day novenas are attended by over 300,000 people of all ages year after year, as they meet to pray in a community setting. The pilgrimage Icon, which travelled the country in April and May, will now visit all four June novenas.