Day 6: Help in time of need

The sixth day of the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Novena turns from the history of the icon to the lived experience of the devotion: the Catholic conviction that Mary's help is perpetual, that her intercession is available at every moment of need, and that the soul that turns to her with confidence is heard. Today we ask the Mother of Perpetual Help for her help in the specific troubles of our lives.

Today's invocation

O Mother of Perpetual Help, with the greatest confidence I come before your sacred image to implore your help. (Continue with the full opening prayer.)

Today's meditation

The title Mother of Perpetual Help (Italian: Madonna del Perpetuo Soccorso) names a Catholic theological conviction with extensive scriptural and traditional foundations. The conviction is that the Mother of God, after her Assumption into heaven, has not retired from her motherhood of the Catholic faithful but has intensified it. She continues, from heaven, to intercede for every soul that turns to her, with a maternal attention that does not waver and does not tire. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: "Taken up to heaven she did not lay aside this saving office but by her manifold intercession continues to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation" (CCC 969, citing Vatican II Lumen Gentium 62).

The help the Mother of Perpetual Help offers is not magical relief from every difficulty. The Catholic doctrine of Marian intercession does not promise that praying to Mary will cause every difficulty to dissolve. The help she offers is the help proper to a mother: she prays for us, she obtains graces for us, she presents our petitions to her Son with the special favor of a mother's request, and she sustains us in the trials we are not given to escape. The Catholic faithful who have prayed Marian devotions for many years testify that what Mary obtains is often not what we asked but what we needed.

Today's intention

Today, bring to the Mother of Perpetual Help the specific troubles you are carrying. Be specific. Mother of Perpetual Help, I bring to you today this matter on which I am asking your maternal intercession. Then add the broader petition: In all the troubles of my life, send me your help, that I may not be lost and that I may persevere in your Son's love.

A traditional Catholic invocation drawn from the Wednesday Perpetual Help Devotion:

Behold at thy feet, O Mother of Perpetual Help, a wretched sinner who has recourse to thee and confides in thee. O Mother of Mercy, have pity on me. I hear thee called by all the refuge and hope of sinners; be then my refuge and my hope. Assist me, for the love of Jesus Christ.

Reflection

The Catholic devotion to the Mother of Perpetual Help is particularly the devotion of the Catholic ordinary life. The icon is venerated not principally in moments of catastrophic crisis (those are typically addressed by the Memorare and the flying novena of nine successive Memorares) but in the steady accumulation of small troubles that make up the texture of an ordinary Catholic existence: the difficult colleague, the strained relationship, the chronic financial pressure, the persistent low-grade health complaint, the unresolved doubt about a vocation. The Mother of Perpetual Help is the Mother who walks with us through these.

The traditional Catholic discipline of weekly Wednesday devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Help is, in this sense, a Catholic spiritual discipline of the ordinary life: every Wednesday, the soul brings the past week's troubles to the Mother of Perpetual Help and receives, in the sacramental life of the parish, the renewal of grace needed for the week ahead. The cumulative effect over a Catholic lifetime is the formation of a soul that is steadily, undramatically, kept close to Christ through Mary.

Closing prayers

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

Mother of Perpetual Help, pray for us in all our troubles.