TWO POPULAR devotions are made priorities of spiritual ministries at Bible Center, i.e. Mary, Mother of Perpetual Help and Divine Mercy. The two are implemented in different ways and has its own spesific programs. After several weeks of delay, the Novena of Mary, Mother of Perpetual Help, resumes its regular prayer and mass, Wednesday, 12 March 2014, evening. Around thirty people present and join the first day of the first novena of 2014. Throughout the year, the novena will be conducted as series of novenas. After nine Wednesday, it will a break of two weeks, and then resume with the next novena for nine consecutive Wednesday. The prayer is combined with Holy Eucharist. When it happens on the day of solemnity, the mass is excluded. It has also option for Benediction instead of Holy Mass. A new booklet is consequently issued with several additional hymns of Mary and special prayer for each day. Therefore the novena book-let is specially issued for internal use at Bible Centre only. However, it is put on website (HERE) for free-download, yet needs some modification when used in other places. For the future, the novena will happen at 7 pm (19.00 WIB).

Why devotions?

Brief history of Icon of Mary, Mother of Perpetual Help

The earliest written account of the image comes from a Latin and Italian plaque placed in the church of San Matteo in Via Merulana where it was first venerated by the public in 1499. The writer of the icon is unknown, but according to a parchment attached to the painting] that accompanied the icon, it was stolen by a merchant sailing to Rome from the island of Crete, also sometimes referred to as Candia. The merchant sailed and hid the icon while traveling at sea, until a storm hit hard and the sailors prayed with the icon for help When the merchant arrived in Rome he fell ill, and as a dying wish he asked a second merchant to place the icon in a church where it could serve for veneration. Initially, the merchant was reluctant in giving away the icon and took four instances until the second merchant confided to his wife about the icon. Upon seeing the beautiful icon, the woman refused to give it to the church but instead hung it in their home. Later on, the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to the merchant's daughter, grandmother and neighbor, who implored that the icon be turned over to a parish. The Virgin Mary allegedly appeared to the little girl that the icon ought to be placed between the basilicas of St. Mary Major and St. John Lateran. The wife gave the icon to the Augustinian Friars. On March 27, 1499, the icon was transferred to the church of San Matteo where it remained for 300 years. The picture was then popularly called the Madonna di San Matteo.

In 1798, French troops under Louis-Alexandre Berthier occupied Rome as part of the French Revolutionary Wars, establishing the short-lived Roman Republic and taking Pope Pius VI prisoner. Among the several churches demolished during the French occupation was San Matteo in Via Merulana, which housed the icon. The Augustinian friars who rescued the icon first took it to the nearby Church of St. Eusebius, then later set it up on a side altar in the Church of Santa Maria in Posterula.

In January 1855, the Redemptorist priests purchased Villa Caserta in Rome along the Via Merulana and converted it into their headquarters. Without realizing it, the land they had purchased was actually the church and monastery of Saint Matthew, the site which was the alleged choice of the Virgin to enshrine the icon.

Decades later, Pope Pius IX invited the Redemptorist Fathers to set up a Marian house of veneration in Rome, in response to which the Redemptorists built the Church of St. Alphonsus Liguori at that location. The Redemptorists were thus established on the Via Merulana, not knowing that it had once been the site of the Church of San Matteo and shrine of the once-famous icon.

Pope Pius IX, who as a boy had prayed before the picture in San Matteo, became interested in the discovery and in a letter dated December 11, 1865 to Father General Mauron, C.SS.R., ordered that Our Lady of Perpetual Succour should be again publicly venerated in Via Merulana, and this time at the new church of St. Alphonsus. Pope Pius IX directed the Augustinian friars to surrender the icon to the Redemptorist priests, on condition that the Redemptorists must supply the Augustinians with another picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Help or a good copy of the icon in exchange as a gesture of goodwill. Pope Pius IX instructions to the Redemptorists were:

The Cardinal Prefect of Propaganda will call the Superior of the community of Sancta Maria in Posterula and will tell him that it is Our desire that the image of Most Holy Mary, referred to in this petition, be again placed between Saint John and St. Mary Major; the Redemptorists shall replace it with another adequate picture.

SEE: Our Lady of Perpetual Help (Wikipedia)