Our Lady of Perpetual Help, also known as Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, is a title given to the Blessed Virgin Mary by Pope Pius IX, associated with a celebrated Byzantine icon of the same name dating from the 15th century.
The icon has been in Rome since 1499, and is currently in the church of Sant'Alfonso di Liguori all'Esquilino. In the Eastern Orthodox Church this iconography is known as the Virgin of the Passion or Theotokos of the Passion.
Due to the Redemptorist Priests who had been appointed as missionaries of this icon, the image has become very popular among Roman Catholics in particular, and has been very much copied and reproduced. Modern reproductions are sometimes displayed in homes, business establishments, and public transportation. The Redemptorist priests are the only religious order currently entrusted by the Holy See to protect and propagate a Marian religious work of art.
The icon has merited two Papal endorsements, one from Pope Pius IX who entrusted the icon to the Redemptorist in December 1865, and another from Blessed Pope John Paul II, who presented an icon to a Muslim cleric in May 2001 during his first-ever visit to the Umayyad Mosque.
A feast in honour of the icon was celebrated on 27 June and "novena" prayers are customarily held on Wednesdays. Today, the feast day of the Our Lady of Perpetual Help is celebrated on June 27 of the year, with novenas held every Wednesday of the weeks of the year.
Read more about Our Lady Of Perpetual Help: Description, Origin and Discovery, Transfer, Restoration of The Icon, Present Caretaker, Religious Veneration, National Patroness of Haiti
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“I askèd a thief to steal me a peach
He turned up his eyes
I ask’d a lithe lady to lie her down
Holy & meek she cries—
As soon as I went
An angel came.
He wink’d at the thief
And smild at the dame—
And without one word said
Had a peach from the tree
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—William Blake (1757–1827)
“His breast was the seat of all those passions which degrade our nature, and disturb our reason. There they raged in a perpetual conflict; but avarice, the meanest of them all, generally triumphed, ruled absolutely, and in many instances, which I forbear to mention, most scandalously.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)