Day 7: The Wednesday Devotion

The seventh day of the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Novena turns to the traditional Catholic Wednesday devotion that has, since the late nineteenth century, been the principal weekly liturgical observance of the icon. The Perpetual Novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Help (a different and broader devotion than the nine-day novena we are praying), prayed publicly in Catholic parishes on Wednesdays, has been one of the most widely attended Catholic weekly devotions of the modern era.

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 Redemptorist Fathers, after receiving the icon from Pope Pius IX in 1866, instituted the practice of weekly devotional services to Our Lady of Perpetual Help in their parishes, principally on Wednesday evenings. The choice of Wednesday was the Catholic devotional convention of associating particular days of the week with particular devotions: Sunday with the Resurrection, Monday with the Holy Souls in Purgatory, Tuesday with the Holy Angels and Saint Anthony, Wednesday with Saint Joseph and (in the Redemptorist tradition) Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Thursday with the Eucharist, Friday with the Sacred Heart, Saturday with the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

The Wednesday devotion typically includes: the singing of the Marian hymn Mother of Christ, the reading of selected petitions and thanksgivings written by parishioners during the past week, the praying of the Our Lady of Perpetual Help novena prayers in common, and the Solemn Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament. In its peak form in the mid-twentieth century, the Wednesday devotion at the Redemptorist Mission Church of Saint Alphonsus in Saint Louis, Missouri, drew tens of thousands of attendees per week and was one of the principal Catholic devotional gatherings of the United States.

The Wednesday devotion declined in attendance in many Catholic parishes after the 1960s, in keeping with the broader decline of paraliturgical devotional practice in the post-conciliar Catholic world. It has begun to revive in recent decades in many parishes, often in response to the renewed interest of younger Catholics in traditional devotional forms. Many Catholic dioceses today preserve at least one weekly Wednesday Perpetual Help devotion, often at a Redemptorist parish or a major shrine.¹

Today's intention

Today, if there is a Wednesday Perpetual Help devotion at a Catholic parish near you, consider attending it next Wednesday during this novena. Bring your principal intention to the public Wednesday devotion, and write it (along with thanksgivings for past favors received) on the petition slips that the parish typically provides.

If there is no Wednesday devotion in your area, you can pray the Wednesday devotion privately. The principal elements are: the recitation of the Our Lady of Perpetual Help novena prayer, the litany of Our Lady of Perpetual Help (or the Litany of Loreto), the reading of one of the Glories of Mary of Saint Alphonsus Liguori (a chapter at a time), and a brief silent prayer before an image of the icon.

Reflection

The Catholic devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Help is particularly suited to weekly observance because it is, in its fullest form, not a one-time crisis intervention but a continuous Marian formation of the Catholic life. The soul that prays the Wednesday devotion week after week, year after year, is being slowly shaped by the icon: by its symbolism, its prayers, its scriptural readings, its hymns. Over a lifetime, this slow formation is profound.

The icon itself, contemplated each Wednesday before the Blessed Sacrament, becomes increasingly transparent to the spiritual realities it represents. The Christ Child in the icon is the Lord Jesus present in the tabernacle. The instruments of the Passion held by the angels are the Mass and the sacraments, in which the Passion is made present. The face of Mary, contemplated in the icon, is the face of our Mother who is alive in heaven and who attends to our weekly prayer with maternal love.

Closing prayers

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

Mother of Perpetual Help, every Wednesday and every day of our lives, pray for us.

Footnotes

1. The Wednesday devotion is documented in the Redemptorist parish manuals from the late nineteenth century onward and in the historical archives of the Redemptorist Generalate at Sant'Alfonso in Rome. ↩