Will the Real OLPH Please Stand Up!

By: Rev. John McGowan, C.Ss.R.

I have known her all my life. She was there at my very beginnings.

Her golden picture was the first one to greet me each time I walked into the lower church of my parish in Brooklyn. Her eyes looked down on us above blackboards in grade school classrooms. She occupied a privileged section in the family living room. She was the icon of my life.

If you ever asked me what Mary the Mother of Jesus looked like, I would imagine the lady in royal green with gold piping on her gown holding the frightened child in her left arm. I would see her long nose, her small mouth, and her wide, large eyes looking out at me. The woman in the picture called Our Lady of Perpetual Help became as familiar to me as the face of my own mother.

I was baptized in the church named after her, and spent my school years in a place known by her famous initials — OLPH. All through my youth, she was everywhere. A day did not go by that I did not see her face. At the communion rail of her church, I received my First Communion. On her sanctuary floor, I became a confirmed Catholic. Her face and the child in her arms were the wallpaper of my life, the backdrop, the scenery of all my days and years.

And I fell in love with her name — Our Mother (or Our Lady) of Perpetual Help. She was not named after a city or a country or a place, but received her name from a permanent human need and condition — HELP. Not occasional help, or now-and-then help, but help perpetually, always. She was the woman who offered perpetual help to us who would always be in need of help.

When I was a 14-year-old boy, I had this great desire to become a priest so I traveled more than 500 miles to a high school seminary far away from Brooklyn. And when I arrived tired, sad, and lonely, there she was waiting for me. On the side altar of the seminary chapel was the same picture of the golden lady. When I looked up from my classroom desk, there she was right next to the crucifix over the blackboard, gazing down at each one of her worried, fearful, frightened, homesick sons. The minor seminary was called St. Mary’s but its real name was St. Mary of Perpetual Help. Through my years there, she chased homesickness and loneliness away, and made sure we never felt motherless. As long as she was there, each of us was home.

She watched as the years passed, and once again I found myself kneeling on another sanctuary floor beneath her picture in the novitiate chapel in Maryland. She looked on as I was dressed in the Redemptorist habit. She and I loved the sound her rosary beads made as they bounced from one knee to the other. She happily listened to the vows I spoke, and was front and center witnessing my promises of poverty, chastity, and obedience. She was there when I became a Redemptorist.

Five years later I was ordained a priest and it happened, of all days, on her day — the Feast of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. In the years of ministry that followed she was not only a perpetual help but also a permanent presence. Her holy card bookmarked my breviary. Her plastic image joined the photos and cards in my wallet. A gold medal chiseled with her face hung around my neck.

I taught in the same high school seminary dedicated to her and parish priest-ed for 10 happy years in the church known by her initials. She honored me by allowing me to tell others about her so often in novenas and missions and retreats. I distributed thousands of her holy cards to welcoming hands, and held her picture high so people could process up center aisles to venerate her by touching their fingers to her fingers in the icon.

There wasn’t a day in all those years that I did not see her or that she did not see me. Yet there was one day that stands out among all my thousands of OLPH days. History tells us that there was only one original OLPH picture that came from the Byzantine world several hundred years ago. It was a very popular and miraculous Marian image for about 300 years in Europe. During the Napoleonic invasions through Rome, the icon disappeared but resurfaced again in the mid-1800s. In 1886, Pope Pius IX presented it to the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer with the command, “make Our Mother of Perpetual Help known throughout the world.”

The original icon was then enshrined above the main altar in St. Alphonsus Church, the Redemptorist headquarters in Rome. Every picture, image, holy card, and mosaic that I had ever seen of Our Mother of Perpetual Help was just a mere copy, a reproduction, a replica of the one-and-only original. There was only one real picture of Our Mother of Perpetual Help and that was sealed within a protective plastic frame above the altar in our church in Rome. Never in my life did I ever expect to see that precious icon.

Fortunately, in October 2009, I was allowed to take a trip to Rome. Of all the sights and monuments on display in the Eternal City, there was only one that I just had to see — the original icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help. The catacombs, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Pieta, the Spanish Steps, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel all wowed me, but the highlight of the entire week happened when I walked through the doors of St. Alphonsus Church. I let my eyes slowly roam up the center aisle, up to the main altar, and there she was. The real OLPH!

The original icon was much smaller than I expected. It was quite simple and clean and even looked brand new. All I wanted to do was sit there in the front pew and stare at her. She was so familiar looking and ordinary, so beautiful. It was a great moment of grace for me as wave upon wave of gratitude splashed over me. Never in my life did I ever expect to see, face-to-face, the original copy of Perpetual Help, and yet there we were silently staring at each other. How many millions of eyes looked at her through the centuries and how many needy faces did her wide eyes console? She calmed, she watched, she welcomed everyone who ever came to her.

Although this was my first visit to gaze at her original face, I felt as if I had seen her all my years. And I had. She was more than an icon, more than an image, more than a sacred picture. Actually she was only a copy of the Mother she symbolized. I needed no introduction. We were not strangers. We had known each other from my very beginnings.

The visit to the real Mother of Perpetual Help climaxed when I dressed in an alb and green vestments, and walked up those three steps to celebrate Mass beneath her original miraculous image. Although the church that morning was virtually empty, it was packed with the memory of so many people in my life: people who introduced me to her, people who told me of her, people who prayed for me to her. My parents were there, living and deceased Redemptorists were there, my classmates were there and all the friends I met and loved through the years were there.

The Mass that morning topped my ordination Mass and any other “super Mass” I ever celebrated or attended. Even though I stood beneath her original image — whose eyes peeked at me over the raised up host and chalice — I felt that this icon might be the original one, but the real OLPH resided not only in that Roman church, but also in every image of her that enshrined every church, that walled every home or classroom, that bookmarked every volume, that medaled every necklace, or holy carded every prayer book.

There may be a one-and-only original icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help, but the real OLPH is everywhere. And the real OLPH stands up whenever we need her.