History

 The Icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help

Many names have been given to me. I have been called the “Virgin of the Passion”, “The Golden Madonna”, “The Mother of the Redemptorist Missionaries”, “The Mother of Catholic Homes”.

​The name of my own choosing is “Mother of Perpetual Help”. It is also the name by which Pope Pius IX requested the Redemptorist Missionaries to make me known. My story is of how Heaven hallows human happenings for purposes divine. It is a history that appears complicated and adventurous, but seen ‘from above” it is a simple, straight line drawn through human history. It is the story of an unknown artist, a repentant thief, a curious little girl, an abandoned church, an old religious and a Pope.

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And above all, it is the story of my presence in the apostolic life of the Missionaries of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer.

The meaning behind Our Mother of Perpetual Help Icon

Our Lady of Perpetual Help is a Byzantine icon that is known for being miraculous; over the centuries countless healings and special graces have been attributed to it, so much so that the image has been honored and venerated by many Popes. The miraculous icon is painted on wood and measures about 20" in height (54 x 41.5 centimeters) and depicts the Virgin Mary, under the title “Mother of God,” holding the Child Jesus.

Description:

The original wooden icon is suspended on the altar, measures 17" × 21" inches, and is written on hard nut wood with a gold leaf background. The image depicts the following symbols:

• The Blessed Virgin Mary — wearing a dress of dark red, in Byzantine iconography the color of the empress, the Queen. The subject shows Mary looking towards the faithful while pointing at her son, Jesus Christ who is frightened by the instruments of crucifixion and is depicted with a fallen sandal.

 

• The left side is Saint Michael Archangel — carrying the lance and sponge of the crucifixion of Jesus.

 

• On the right side is Saint Gabriel Archangel carrying a 3-bar cross and nails.

 

• The Virgin Mary has a star on her forehead signifying her role as Star of the Sea while the cross on the side has been claimed as referring to the Greek monastery which produced the icon.

Byzantine depictions of the Blessed Virgin Mary in art have three stars, one star each on the shoulder and one on the forehead. This type of icon is called Hodegetria, where Mary is pointing to her Son, known as a Theotokos of the Passion.[3]

Mary is depicted with a long slender nose, thin lips, and smoothly arched eyebrows, evidence of being made by a Greek artist. The veil and her face itself are rounded, indicating holiness. The size of the mother is also out of proportion to her son, a deliberate intent by the artist to show Mary as larger than life.

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The Greek inscriptions read MP-ΘΥ (Μήτηρ Θεοῦ, Mother of God), ΟΑΜ (Ὁ Ἀρχάγγελος Μιχαήλ, Michael the Archangel), ΟΑΓ (Ὁ Ἀρχάγγελος Γαβριήλ, Gabriel the Archangel) and IC-XC (Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, Jesus Christ), respectively.

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The icon has a gold ground on a walnut panel, believed to be from Crete.[4] The Cretan School was the source of the many icons imported into Europe from the late Middle Ages through the Renaissance. The gold background represents the Kingdom of God.[5] The round halo surrounding the Virgin Mary's head as well as details on the robes were created through Estofado, which is an artistic effect created by scraping the paint to reveal the gold background, additional effects are achieved by chasing designs on the gold. The icon was cleaned and restored once in 1866 and again in the year 1940.

PRAY THE CHAPLET OF OUR MOTHER OF PERPETUAL HELP

The Merchant Who Stole The Icon

There is a tradition from the 16th century that tells us about a merchant from the isle of Crete who stole a miraculous picture one of its churches. He hid it among his wares and set out westward. It was only through Divine Providence that he survived a wild tempest and landed on solid ground. After about a year, he arrived in Rome with his stolen picture.

It was there that he became mortally ill and looked for a friend to care for him. At his hour of death, he revealed his secret of the picture and begged his friend to return it to a church. His friend promised to fulfill this wish, but because his wife did not want to relinquish such a beautiful treasure, the friend also died without fulfilling the promise.
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At last, the Blessed Virgin appeared to the six year old daughter of this Roman family and told her to tell her mother and grandmother that the picture of Holy Mary of Perpetual Help should be placed in the Church of St. Matthew the Apostle, located between the basilicas of St. Mary Major and St. John Lateran.
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The tradition relates how, after many doubts and difficulties, “the mother obeyed and after consulting with the clergy in charge of the church, the picture of the Virgin was placed in St. Matthew’s, on the 27th of March, 1499″. There it would be venerated during the next 300 years. Thus began the second stage of the history of the icon, and devotion to Our Mother of Perpetual Help began to spread throughout the city of Rome.

The Icon in St Mathews Church

St. Matthew’s Church was not grand but it possessed an enormous treasure that attracted the faithful: the icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help.
 
From 1739 to 1798, the church and adjacent monastery were under the care of the Irish Augustinians who had been unjustly exiled from their country and used the monastery as a formation center for their Roman Province. The young students found an asylum of peace in the presence of the Virgin of Perpetual Help while they prepared themselves for priesthood, the apostolate and martyrdom.
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In 1798, war raged in Rome and the monastery and church were almost totally destroyed. Several Augustinians remained there for a few more years but eventually they, too, had to leave. Some returned to Ireland, others to new foundations in America, while the majority moved to a nearby monastery. This last group brought with them the picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Thus began the third stage of her history, the “Hidden Years”.
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In 1819, the Irish Augustinians moved to the Church of St. Mary in Posterula, near the “Umberto I” bridge that crosses the Tiber River. With them went the “Virgin of St. Matthew’s”. But as “Our Lady of Grace” was already venerated in this church, the newly arrived picture was placed in a private chapel in the monastery where it remained, all but forgotten, but for Brother Augustine Orsetti, one of the original young friars from St. Matthew’s.

The Icon was Rediscovered

In January of 1855, the Redemptorist Missionaries purchased “Villa Caserta” in Rome, converting it into the general house for their missionary congregation that had spread to western Europe and North America . On this same property along the Via Merulana, were the ruins of the Church and Monastery of St. Matthew. Without realizing it at the time, they had acquired the land that, many years previously, had been chosen by the Virgin as her Sanctuary between St. Mary Major and St. John Lateran.
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Four months later, construction was begun on a church in honor of the Most Holy Redeemer and dedicated to Saint Alphonsus Liguori, founder of the Congregation. On December 24, 1855, a group of young men began their novitiate in the new house. One of them was Michael Marchi.
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The Redemptorists were extremely interested in the history of their new property. But more so, when on February, 7th, 1863, they were puzzled by the questioning from a sermon given by the famous Jesuit preacher, Father Francesco Blosi, about an icon of Mary that “had been in the Church of St. Matthew on Via Merulana and was known as The Virgin of St. Matthew, or more correctly as The Virgin of Perpetual Help. ”
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On another occasion, the chronicler of the Redemptorist community “examining some authors who had written about Roman antiquities, found references made to the Church of St. Matthew. Among them there was a particular citation mentioning that in the church (which had been situated within the garden area of the community) there had been an ancient icon of the Mother of God that enjoyed ‘great veneration and fame for its miracles.’” Then “having told all this to the community, a dialogue began as to where they could locate the picture. Father Marchi remembered all that he had heard from old Brother Augustine Orsetti and told his confreres that he had often seen the icon and knew very well where it could be found.”

The Icon was Restored

In 1990, the picture of Our Mother of Perpetual Help was taken down from above the main altar to satisfy the many requests for new photographs of the icon. It was then that the serious state of deterioration of the image was discovered; the wood, as well as the paint, had suffered from environmental changes and prior attempts at restoration.

 

The General Government of the Redemptorists decided to contract the technical services of the Vatican Museum to bring about a general restoration of the icon that would deal with the cracks and fungus that threatened irreparable damage.

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The first part of the restoration consisted of a series of X-rays, infra-red images, qualitative and quantitative analyses of the paint, and other infra-red and ultra-violet tests. The results of these analyses, especially a Carbon-14 test, indicate that the wood of the icon of Perpetual Help could safely be dated from the years 1325-1480.

The second stage of the restoration consisted of the physical work of filling the cracks and perforations in the wood, cleaning the paint and retouching the affected sections, strengthening the structure that sustains the icon, etc. This physical intervention was limited to the absolute minimum because all restorative work, somewhat like bodily surgery, always provokes some trauma.