Who is mother of perpetual

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. 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 thy sacred name, Mary, Mary.

O what consolation, what sweetness, what confidence, what emotion fill my soul when I pronounce your sacred name, or even only think of you. 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.

Vigil candles burn in the chapels throughout the Upper Church and lower crypt level of the National Shrine. Alphonsus Liguori Nicholas Mauron, decided to bring the whole matter to the attention of the Pope. Alphonsus, standing as it did between the Basilicas of St. Mary Major and St. John Lateran. The Holy Father at once took a piece of paper and wrote a short memorandum ordering the Augustinian Fathers of St.

Mary in Posterula to surrender the picture to the Redemptorists, on condition that the Redemptorists supply the Augustinians with another picture of Our Lady or a good copy of the icon of Perpetual Help. Preparations were now made to inaugurate the new public reign of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. On April 26th, a great procession was staged in which the picture was carried throughout the Esquiline region of Rome.

Upon returning to the church, the picture was enthroned over the high altar, in a resplendent shrine-niche especially constructed for it. The report of marvelous healings spread rapidly throughout the city of Rome and people came by the hundreds to visit the shrine. Soon the whole area around the altar was filled with abandoned crutches and canes and several whole glass-covered cabinets were filled with gold and silver thanksgiving offerings in the shapes of miniature hearts, arms, legs and other votive offerings.

Scarcely two weeks after the solemn exposition of the picture, Pope Pius IX himself came to visit the shrine. Mother of Perpetual Help, your very name inspires confidence. We come before your holy picture in praise and thanksgiving to God, seeking your intercession with Jesus, your son, for all the needs of our lives today.

We celebrate your holy motherhood as we proclaim Jesus Christ our Lord and Redeemer. You answered when called to be mother of our Lord. Obtain for us the grace to be alive to our baptismal call and especially to embrace the Gospel of life and to respect all life on earth. Intercede for us so that we may welcome the Word of God in our lives and be bearers of the good news to everyone. The icon depicts the Blessed Virgin Mary wearing a dress of dark red with blue mantle and veil.

On the left is the archangel Michael, carrying the lance and sponge as instruments of Jesus Christ's crucifixion. On the right is the archangel Gabriel carrying a 3-bar cross and nails. This type of icon is a later type of the Hodegetria composition, where Mary is pointing to her Son, known as a Theotokos of the Passion.

The Christ-child has been alarmed by a pre-sentiment of his Passion, and has run to his mother for comfort. The facial expression of the Virgin Mary is solemn and is looking directly at the viewer instead of her son.

Jesus is portrayed clinging to his mother with a dangling sandal. The icon is painted with a gold background. The icon is on a walnut panel, and may have been painted in Crete, then ruled by Venice, and the main source of the many icons imported to Europe in the late Middle Ages and through the Renaissance.

It was cleaned and restored in and again in the s. The earliest written account of the image comes from a Latin and Italian plaque placed in the church of Saint Matthew where it was first venerated by the public in The writer of the icon is unknown, but according to legend the icon was stolen by a merchant from Crete who was sailing to Rome.

The merchant supposedly sailed and hid the icon while traveling at sea, until a storm hit hard and the sailors prayed to the icon for help. When the merchant arrived in Rome he fell ill, and as his dying wish he asked another merchant to place the icon in a church where it could be venerated.

The merchant then confided to his wife about the icon. Upon seeing the beautiful icon, the merchant's wife refused to give it to the church but instead hung it in her home.

Later on, the Virgin Mary appeared to the merchant's daughter, requesting that the icon be turned into a parish for veneration.