Day 5: The Redemptorist Mission

The fifth day of the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Novena, the midpoint, turns to the historical moment in which the Catholic devotion to the icon entered its modern form: the entrustment of the icon to the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (the Redemptorists) by Pope Pius IX in 1866. The Redemptorist Order has been the principal modern apostle of the devotion, and the Catholic faithful around the world today owe to the Redemptorist mission the global spread of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

Today's invocation

O Mother of Perpetual Help, with the greatest confidence I come before your sacred image to implore your help. I count not on my own merits but only on the great goodness of your motherly Heart. Thou knowest, O Lady, how often we soil our souls with sin. We come to thee that we may be cleansed by thy intercession. Make us ever more pleasing to thy Son. Amen.

Today's meditation

The Catholic Order of the Most Holy Redeemer (the Redemptorists) was founded by Saint Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787) at Scala in southern Italy in 1732. The Order's charism is the missionary preaching of the redeeming love of Jesus Christ to the most spiritually abandoned souls, particularly in rural and working-class Catholic communities. Saint Alphonsus, who was both a moral theologian of the first rank and a Marian writer of profound depth (his Glories of Mary, completed in 1750, is one of the principal modern Marian classics), placed the Mother of God at the center of the Redemptorist apostolate from the foundation of the Order.

Pope Pius IX in 1866 entrusted the icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help to the Redemptorists with the words "Make her known throughout the world." The Redemptorist Generalate had recently established its motherhouse on the Via Merulana in Rome, on the very site where the original Augustinian Church of San Matteo had once stood. The icon, recovered after seventy years of obscurity, was placed above the high altar of the new Redemptorist Church of Sant'Alfonso, where it remains today as the principal Marian image of the Catholic world after the icons of Częstochowa and Guadalupe.

The Redemptorist Fathers took up the papal commission with characteristic energy. They produced facsimile copies of the icon for every Redemptorist parish around the world; they composed and published the standard form of the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Novena that is prayed in millions of Catholic households today; they instituted the Wednesday Perpetual Help Devotion that became one of the most widely-attended weekly Catholic devotions of the twentieth century. Through the Redemptorists, the icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help became, by the early twentieth century, the most reproduced Marian image in the modern Catholic world.¹

Today's intention

Today, in addition to your principal intention, pray for the continuing fruitfulness of the Redemptorist mission. Mother of Perpetual Help, bless the work of the Redemptorist Fathers and Brothers across the world. Through their preaching and through the icon they have spread to the ends of the earth, draw souls into the love of your Son.

If you have a Redemptorist parish in your diocese (the Redemptorist Fathers serve parishes in every major Catholic country), consider attending a Wednesday Mass at the parish during this novena, and bringing your principal intention to the Wednesday devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

Reflection

The Catholic spiritual tradition has long observed that Marian devotion is most fruitful when it is joined to a particular Catholic charism, a particular religious family with its proper Marian disposition. The Carmelites carry the devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel and the Brown Scapular; the Dominicans carry the devotion to Our Lady of the Rosary; the Franciscans carry the devotion to the Immaculate Conception; the Vincentians carry the devotion to the Miraculous Medal; the Redemptorists carry the devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Each charism is an instance of the broader Catholic devotion to the Mother of God, expressed under a particular title and through a particular religious family.

The Catholic faithful are not required to attach themselves to one of these charisms exclusively. Many Catholics keep multiple Marian devotions across the year: the rosary daily, the Brown Scapular always, the Miraculous Medal as a sacramental, the Our Lady of Perpetual Help novena before her feast on 27 June, the consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary annually. The various devotions are not in competition; they are different facets of the one devotion to the Mother of the Lord.

Closing prayers

Pray three times each: the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be.

Mother of Perpetual Help, pray for us.

Footnotes

1. Saint Alphonsus Liguori, The Glories of Mary (1750). The Redemptorist promotion of the icon is documented in the Redemptorist annals at Sant'Alfonso, Rome, and in the standard Redemptorist devotional manuals. ↩