A Novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Help
Mater de Perpetuo Succursu
Painted on Crete
The Novena Prayer
Behold, O Mother of Perpetual Help, at thy feet a wretched sinner who has recourse to thee and trusts in thee. O Mother of mercy, have pity on me. I hear all call thee the refuge and the hope of sinners: be therefore my refuge and my hope.
Thou art the dispenser of every grace that God grants us in our misery; it is for this cause that he has made thee so powerful, so rich, so kind, that thou mightest help us in our need. In thy hands I place my eternal salvation, and to thee I entrust my soul.
The icon is a Byzantine panel painted on wood, dated by art historians to somewhere between about 1325 and 1480 and generally held to have been made on Crete, then under Venetian rule and a centre of icon painting for the Western market.
Stolen
The Novena Prayer
Behold, O Mother of Perpetual Help, at thy feet a wretched sinner who has recourse to thee and trusts in thee. O Mother of mercy, have pity on me. I hear all call thee the refuge and the hope of sinners: be therefore my refuge and my hope.
Thou art the dispenser of every grace that God grants us in our misery; it is for this cause that he has made thee so powerful, so rich, so kind, that thou mightest help us in our need. In thy hands I place my eternal salvation, and to thee I entrust my soul.
The traditional account, recorded in a document kept with the picture, says a merchant stole the icon from a church on Crete and carried it to Rome among his goods. Falling ill there, he asked a friend to see it placed in a church, and after some delay it was.
San Matteo
The Novena Prayer
Behold, O Mother of Perpetual Help, at thy feet a wretched sinner who has recourse to thee and trusts in thee. O Mother of mercy, have pity on me. I hear all call thee the refuge and the hope of sinners: be therefore my refuge and my hope.
Thou art the dispenser of every grace that God grants us in our misery; it is for this cause that he has made thee so powerful, so rich, so kind, that thou mightest help us in our need. In thy hands I place my eternal salvation, and to thee I entrust my soul.
The icon was installed in the church of San Matteo on the Via Merulana in Rome, in the care of Augustinian friars, and stayed there for roughly three hundred years, becoming a well-known object of local devotion.
Lost Under the Occupation
The Novena Prayer
Behold, O Mother of Perpetual Help, at thy feet a wretched sinner who has recourse to thee and trusts in thee. O Mother of mercy, have pity on me. I hear all call thee the refuge and the hope of sinners: be therefore my refuge and my hope.
Thou art the dispenser of every grace that God grants us in our misery; it is for this cause that he has made thee so powerful, so rich, so kind, that thou mightest help us in our need. In thy hands I place my eternal salvation, and to thee I entrust my soul.
In 1798 French troops occupying Rome demolished San Matteo along with other churches. The Augustinians carried the icon away with them, and it hung in relative obscurity, first at Sant'Eusebio and then on a side altar at Santa Maria in Posterula, while it was widely assumed to have been destroyed.
Found Again
The Novena Prayer
Behold, O Mother of Perpetual Help, at thy feet a wretched sinner who has recourse to thee and trusts in thee. O Mother of mercy, have pity on me. I hear all call thee the refuge and the hope of sinners: be therefore my refuge and my hope.
Thou art the dispenser of every grace that God grants us in our misery; it is for this cause that he has made thee so powerful, so rich, so kind, that thou mightest help us in our need. In thy hands I place my eternal salvation, and to thee I entrust my soul.
The Redemptorists acquired the site of the ruined San Matteo in 1855 and built a church there to their founder, Alphonsus Liguori, without at first knowing the icon still existed. An elderly member of the community remembered having served Mass before it as a boy, and the picture was traced.
Make Her Known
The Novena Prayer
Behold, O Mother of Perpetual Help, at thy feet a wretched sinner who has recourse to thee and trusts in thee. O Mother of mercy, have pity on me. I hear all call thee the refuge and the hope of sinners: be therefore my refuge and my hope.
Thou art the dispenser of every grace that God grants us in our misery; it is for this cause that he has made thee so powerful, so rich, so kind, that thou mightest help us in our need. In thy hands I place my eternal salvation, and to thee I entrust my soul.
Pius IX granted the icon to the Redemptorists by decree in 1865, with the instruction that they make her known throughout the world. It was carried in procession to the church of Sant'Alfonso on 26 April 1866, where it remains.
What Is in the Picture
The Novena Prayer
Behold, O Mother of Perpetual Help, at thy feet a wretched sinner who has recourse to thee and trusts in thee. O Mother of mercy, have pity on me. I hear all call thee the refuge and the hope of sinners: be therefore my refuge and my hope.
Thou art the dispenser of every grace that God grants us in our misery; it is for this cause that he has made thee so powerful, so rich, so kind, that thou mightest help us in our need. In thy hands I place my eternal salvation, and to thee I entrust my soul.
The archangels Michael and Gabriel flank the Virgin, each holding instruments of the Passion, and the Christ child looks toward them rather than out of the frame. The Greek lettering identifies them. It is a picture of a child who has just seen what is coming.
The Falling Sandal
The Novena Prayer
Behold, O Mother of Perpetual Help, at thy feet a wretched sinner who has recourse to thee and trusts in thee. O Mother of mercy, have pity on me. I hear all call thee the refuge and the hope of sinners: be therefore my refuge and my hope.
Thou art the dispenser of every grace that God grants us in our misery; it is for this cause that he has made thee so powerful, so rich, so kind, that thou mightest help us in our need. In thy hands I place my eternal salvation, and to thee I entrust my soul.
The Christ child grips his mother's hand with both of his own and one sandal hangs loose from his foot, as though he has turned suddenly. It is the detail most often pointed to in the icon, and it is the reason the picture reads as a moment rather than a pose.
Carried by the Order
The Novena Prayer
Behold, O Mother of Perpetual Help, at thy feet a wretched sinner who has recourse to thee and trusts in thee. O Mother of mercy, have pity on me. I hear all call thee the refuge and the hope of sinners: be therefore my refuge and my hope.
Thou art the dispenser of every grace that God grants us in our misery; it is for this cause that he has made thee so powerful, so rich, so kind, that thou mightest help us in our need. In thy hands I place my eternal salvation, and to thee I entrust my soul.
The Redemptorists took the instruction literally, and copies of the icon went out with their missions across Europe, the Americas and Asia, which is why a picture painted on a Venetian-ruled Greek island now hangs in parish churches on every continent.
The prayer that opens each day is from the traditional novena to Our Mother of Perpetual Help, first printed at Jaén in Spain in 1899 and long in circulation; it is given here as it is commonly printed. What follows each day is a fact about the icon or the devotion. The Redemptorist connection runs through this collection — see St. Gerard Majella, a lay brother of the same congregation.
