Perpetual Help icon to find home in N.O. Dec. 11-21

Redemptorist priests and Catholics alike have entreated Mary’s intercession at one time or another in their lives, says Redemptorist Father Allan Weinert, parochial vicar at St. Alphonsus Parish in the Irish Channel. After all, she has a direct pipeline to Jesus, her son.

 

A new generation has the opportunity to show devotion to Our Mother of Perpetual Help from Dec. 11-21, when a Jubilee icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help is displayed at St. Mary’s Assumption Church.

A solemn procession and enthronement of the Jubilee icon is scheduled Dec. 11 at the 10:30 a.m. Mass at St. Mary’s Assumption. A concert will follow at 3 p.m., including sacred Marian hymns with organ and ensemble singing directed by music director Robert Zanca.

A novena is set from Dec. 12-16, and again from Dec. 18-21, beginning at 7 p.m. nightly, in honor of Our Mother of Perpetual Help. Doors to St. Mary’s will open at 6 p.m., with sacred music from 6:30-7 p.m. Various local Redemptorist priests will celebrate the novena prayer service, with Father Richard Thibodeau, pastor, opening and closing the novena.

An exhibit detailing the history of the original Our Mother of Perpetual Help painting, the devotions such as novenas and her history in New Orleans will be held in the Seelos Shrine on St. Mary’s Assumption campus.

“There is a rich history here,” Father Weinert said.

The traveling Jubilee Missionary icon was commissioned by the Redemptorists of the Denver Province to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Redemptorists being entrusted by Pope Pius IX with the care of the miraculous picture of Our Mother of Perpetual Help to “preach Perpetual Help throughout the world.”

It was hand-written by Redemptorist Father Eugeniusz Karpiel, the artist who directs a school of iconography in Krakow, Poland. The icon measures 16 3/4 inches by 21 3/4 inches and was touched to the original icon and blessed in Rome in 2015, said Redemptorist transitional deacon and parochial associate Kevin Zubel.

“It’s a very true representation of the original,” Deacon Zubel said.

New Orleans is one of 18 stops the Jubilee Icon will make in the Redemptorist Denver Province before its final resting place in the chapel at St. Clement Health Care Center in Liguori, Missouri. It began its journey almost a year ago at a cloister of the Redemptoristine nuns of Liguori, Missouri.

Popular in New Orleans
Our Mother of Perpetual Help icons have a history in New Orleans, said Deacon Zubel, who has researched the subject. The original icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help was painted between 1320-80 in Crete. It is believed to have been brought to Rome in 1495 and enthroned in the Irish Augustinian Church of St. Matthew for three centuries, after an appearance by “Our Lady,” where she gave a small child her name “Perpetual Help” and instructed the icon to be placed in that church.

When the French invaded Rome in the late 1790s and leveled Catholic churches, including St. Matthew, the icon was moved to St. Eustibio Church. In 1819, it landed in St. Mary Church in Posterula.

Michael Marchi, an altar boy at this church who later became a Redemptorist priest, remembered being told the icon’s history and how it was to be venerated by many, not hidden in obscurity.

When this was brought to the attention of Pope Pius IX in 1866, he entrusted Our Mother of Perpetual Help to the care of Redemptorists to “make her known throughout the world.” She has been enthroned in San Alfonso Church in Rome ever since.

The Redemptorists began promoting her cause immediately, reproducing icons for veneration in their churches beyond Rome.

Deacon Zubel said the first reproduction came to the United States in 1868 to the Church of St. James the Less in Baltimore. Four years later, icons to Our Mother came to New Orleans. By 1874, replicas were installed at the Redemptorist churches of St. Mary’s Assumption, St. Alphonsus and Notre Dame de Bon Secours (which no longer exists). Other sources indicate replicas were also at St. Maurice and St. Henry churches.

In New Orleans on Dec. 8, 1874, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a solemn procession carrying the icon was held at St. Alphonsus.

By 1923, Redemptorists in New Orleans held novenas to Our Mother of Perpetual Help. Public notices said the novena was “of great importance” not only to Catholics but all New Orleanians who were “troubled with sorrow and affliction, sickness or distress of any kind.”

“I found it very meaningful, for that time, to explicitly note that the devotion was open beyond the Catholics in the city,” Deacon Zubel said. “She was such a phenomenon when the Tuesday novenas began.”

Both Deacon Zubel and Father Weinert mentioned how the devotion to Our Mother of Perpetual Help brought solace to locals during wartime and the Great Depression. Tens of thousands made a weekly pilgrimage to St. Alphonsus in 1928. Because of the devotion’s popularity, local streetcar and bus routes were named “novena” to denote the transit stop to the churches on Constance Street.

Devotion to Our Mother of Perpetual Help continues today worldwide, Father Weinert said. Every Tuesday at St. Alphonsus Parish in New Orleans, devotional prayers precede the 7 a.m. Mass at St. Mary’s Chapel, 1516 Jackson Ave., and 8 a.m. Mass at St. Mary’s Assumption.

“We consider it a treasure – an artistic and religious treasure,” Father Weinert said. “We all have our own personal stories about intercession of Mary on our behalf. She continues to offer help.”

At the anniversary Mass held June 27 on Our Mother of Perpetual Help Feast Day at St. Alphonsus the Rock Church in St. Louis, Redemptorist Cardinal Joseph Tobin said Mary “doesn’t turn away” from those in need.

Deacon Zubel said while devotion to Mary has always been strong for the Redemptorists, this anniversary icon has brought renewed interest in the icon tradition and the difference of how this icon is interpreted in the eastern and western Redemptorist traditions as it tells the Paschal mystery of Jesus.

“It was part of our charism from the beginning with St. Alphonsus Liguori (founder of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, known as the Redemptorists) in 1732, who care for those on the margins,” he said. “We, as Redemptorists, are praying with the icon in a different way. That may be a way of introducing her to a new generation.”

St. Mary’s Assumption is located at 2030 Constance St., New Orleans. For icon details or for a special icon visit, call 522-6748 or visit www.stalphonsusno.com.