Our Lady of Perpetual Help
Few images of the Mother of God are as widely loved, or as easily recognized, as Our Lady of Perpetual Help, also called Our Lady of Perpetual Succour. It is a small painted icon in the old Byzantine style: gold background, deep reds and dark greens, Mary gazing not at her Son but out at us, the Christ Child clinging to her hand while a small sandal slips from His foot. For centuries this picture has hung over altars and on kitchen walls, and countless Catholics have learned to turn to it in trouble with a simple, trusting prayer: Mother of Perpetual Help, pray for us.
The title itself is a promise. Mary's help is not occasional or reserved for great emergencies. It is perpetual, constant, always ready. She is the Mother who does not grow tired of being asked, who is at hand in the small daily struggles as well as the large ones. This page tells the story of the icon, its long journey to Rome, the Redemptorists who spread the devotion across the world, the beloved Wednesday novena, and the prayers by which the faithful still call on her.
The Icon and Its Origins
The image belongs to a very old tradition of Marian iconography. Its proper type is known in the East as the Theotokos of the Passion, and the surviving painting is generally traced to the island of Crete, painted in the late medieval period by an artist working in the Byzantine manner. A pious tradition, cherished for its warmth rather than as strict history, holds that the first such image of Our Lady was painted by St. Luke the Evangelist, who is honored as the patron of Christian artists. Whatever its exact date, the icon carries the stillness and reverence of the Eastern tradition, where an image is written and prayed, not merely painted.
Byzantine icons are never simply portraits. Every color and gesture is meant to teach. In this image the gold ground stands for the light of heaven, the deep tunic and veil mark Mary as the true Mother of God, and her calm face invites the one who prays to bring every sorrow to her without fear.
Reading the Image: What Every Detail Means
Once you know what to look for, the icon tells its whole story at a glance. It is a picture of the Child who sees ahead to His own Passion, and of the Mother who holds Him fast.
- The two Archangels: To the left, St. Michael the Archangel carries the lance and the sponge on a reed. To the right, St. Gabriel bears the cross and the nails. These are the instruments of the Passion, held up before the eyes of the Christ Child.
- The startled Child: Jesus, shown as a small boy, has caught sight of these instruments of His future suffering. He turns and takes hold of His Mother's hand with both of His own, running to her for shelter as any frightened child would.
- The loose sandal: In His haste the Child's sandal has come loose and dangles from His foot. It is the small, human touch that has made the icon so beloved, and a reminder of how completely the Son of God shared our nature.
- Mary's gaze: The Mother does not look at her Son. She looks out at us, steady and grave, as if to say that she knows what awaits Him and still holds Him, and that she will hold us too. Her hand does not clasp the Child's hand back but opens toward the one who prays, offering Him to the world.
- The Greek initials: The abbreviations painted in the corners identify the figures. Beside Mary the letters stand for Mother of God, beside the Child for Jesus Christ, and above the angels the initials name Saint Michael the Archangel and Saint Gabriel the Archangel.
The Icon Comes to Rome
According to the account preserved with the image, the icon was brought from Crete to Rome near the end of the fifteenth century by a merchant who had, some say, carried it away from the island in a time of danger. On his deathbed he asked that it be placed in a church for public veneration. After some delay the image was enshrined in the church of San Matteo, on the Via Merulana between the great basilicas of St. Mary Major and St. John Lateran, where it remained for about three hundred years and drew a steady stream of the devout.
Then came upheaval. During the French occupation of Rome at the close of the eighteenth century, San Matteo was destroyed, and the icon slipped out of public view. For decades it was kept quietly by the Augustinian friars who had served the ruined church, moved from one chapel to another, its history half forgotten. It might have vanished from memory entirely had an old friar not remembered venerating it as a boy and, years later, helped bring its story to light again.
Pope Pius IX and the Redemptorists (1866)
In a striking turn of providence, the Redemptorists, the missionary congregation founded by St. Alphonsus Liguori, built their new church of Sant'Alfonso on the very ground where San Matteo had once stood. When the story of the lost icon reached them, they carried the matter to the Holy Father. In 1866 Pope Pius IX entrusted the image to their care, and the words attributed to him have shaped the devotion ever since. He told the Redemptorists to take the picture of Mary and, in his phrase, to "make her known" throughout the world.
On a June day in 1866 the icon was carried in solemn procession through the streets of Rome and enshrined in the church of Sant'Alfonso, where it remains to this day above the high altar. What had been a nearly forgotten painting became, within a generation, one of the most reproduced religious images on earth.
The Redemptorists Spread the Devotion
The Redemptorists took the pope's charge to heart. As they preached parish missions across Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and the Pacific, they carried copies of the icon with them and left the devotion behind wherever they went. Faithful reproductions, blessed and often touched to the original, were placed in parish churches on every continent. Because the icon traveled with missionaries rather than staying in a single shrine, Our Lady of Perpetual Help became one of the truly universal titles of Mary, at home in a great cathedral and in the humblest mission chapel alike.
The Perpetual Novena
The devotion that spread furthest of all is the perpetual novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, most often held on Wednesdays. A novena usually means nine days of prayer, but here the word perpetual has a second sense: in many parishes the novena is offered every week without ceasing, so that the prayer to the Mother of Perpetual Help is quite literally perpetual, going up somewhere in the world at every hour.
A typical Wednesday novena is simple and moving. The people gather before the icon and sing hymns to Our Lady, listen to a short reflection, offer their own petitions and their thanksgivings aloud or in silence, and pray the novena prayer together. In the decades after 1866 these weekly gatherings filled Redemptorist churches, and in many places they still do. The pattern is easy to keep at home as well, in front of a small copy of the icon.
Prayer to Our Lady of Perpetual Help
This is the prayer most often said before the icon, a prayer that names our need plainly and rests everything on her motherly care.
O Mother of Perpetual Help, grant that I may ever invoke your most powerful name, which is the safeguard of the living and the salvation of the dying. O purest Mary, O sweetest Mary, let your name from now on be ever on my lips. Delay not, O Blessed Lady, to help me whenever I call on you, for in all my needs, in all my temptations, I shall never cease to call on you, ever repeating your sacred name, Mary, Mary.
O what consolation, what sweetness, what confidence, what emotion fills my soul when I pronounce your sacred name, or even only think of you. I thank the Lord for having given you, for my good, so sweet, so powerful, so lovely a name. But I will not be content with merely pronouncing your name. Let my love for you prompt me ever to hail you, Mother of Perpetual Help. Amen.
A Short Novena Prayer
This shorter prayer can be used on each day of a nine-day novena, or week by week at the Wednesday devotion. Add your own petition where it fits.
Mother of Perpetual Help, you have been blessed and favored by God. You became not only the Mother of the Redeemer, but the Mother of the redeemed as well. We come to you today as your loving children. Watch over us and take care of us, as a good mother would.
Make our home the home of God, and help us to grow in faith, hope, and love. Grant the favors we now ask of you, and bring us at last, with your Son Jesus, to the joy of heaven. We ask this trusting in your unfailing help, Mother of Perpetual Help, pray for us. Amen.
Praying the Rosary in Her Honor
The Rosary is a natural way to honor Our Lady of Perpetual Help, because the icon itself is a meditation on the mystery of her Son. To gaze on the frightened Child running to His Mother is to stand at the threshold of the Passion, and the beads carry us through the whole of Christ's life in her company. Many people simply place a copy of the icon before them and pray a set of mysteries with her intention in mind.
The Sorrowful Mysteries have a special fittingness here. The instruments of the Passion that startle the Child in the icon, the cross, the nails, the lance, are exactly what these mysteries recall: the agony in the garden, the scourging, the crowning with thorns, the carrying of the cross, and the crucifixion. Praying them before the image lets us keep Mary's own steady gaze on her suffering Son. If you would like to learn how the four sets of mysteries are prayed across the week, see our guide to the Mysteries of the Rosary.
You may wish to close the Rosary with the Prayer to Our Lady of Perpetual Help above, or to add a decade for the intention you most need her to carry for you.
The Feast Day: June 27
The feast of Our Lady of Perpetual Help is kept on June 27, near the anniversary of the 1866 enshrinement of the icon at Sant'Alfonso in Rome. In Redemptorist churches and in the many parishes that bear her name, the day is marked with a solemn Mass, the singing of her hymns, and often a special novena in the days leading up to it. In some countries the devotion is so deeply rooted that great crowds fill the churches every Wednesday of the year, and the June feast becomes the high point of a devotion lived week by week.
The Meaning of the Title
Behind the story and the image stands the simple truth that gives the devotion its power. To call Mary our Perpetual Help is to confess that her care never stops. She helped once at Cana and helps still. She stood by the cross and stands by every cross we carry. Because she is the Mother of the Redeemer, she is the Mother of all the redeemed, and a good mother does not measure out her help or wait to be asked twice.
This is the same tenderness that Catholics honor when they turn to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the heart that loves us without ceasing. The icon of Perpetual Help simply gives that love a face: a Mother who looks straight at us, holds her Son fast, and reaches out her open hand. Whatever trouble brings you to her, you may be sure of one thing, that her help is not for a moment but forever.
Continue Your Devotion to Our Lady
Draw closer to the Mother of Perpetual Help through her Immaculate Heart and the prayer she loves most, the Holy Rosary.
