Our Mother of Perpetual Help
Today is a big feast in Baclaran, where the Redemptorist shrine to the image of Our Lady of Perpetual Help is venerated.
The Christ Child has run to his mother for comfort, frightened by the vision of two angels showing him the grisly manner how he was going to be killed. The specter completely terrifies him that in his haste to seek his mother, he almost loses his right sandal. See how tightly the child clings to his mother’s thumb, entirely dependent on her for protection. Mary holds him securely in her arms but her eyes are focused squarely on us, a reminder of the gravity of the sacrifice her son was performing on our behalf.
How millions of Filipinos show reverence to a 700 year old icon that purportedly originated in Crete is a mystery. Every Wednesday, the Church in Baclaran is packed, as in hundreds of other shrines all over the country where supplicants in a blighted land appeal for her perpetual help.
The icon is my reply to those who attack the Catholic Church for “worshipping” Mary. The Cretan artist successfully depicted a secular scene that does not impart any divinity towards Mary. The case rests with this image.
9 comments:
Mother of Perpetual Help, pray for us!
What a wonderful icon. Thank you for sharing this with me. Teri
I hear a typhon is bearing down on the Philippines
ron
the meaning of the Icon
http://themissionchurch.com/olphiconmeaning.htm
I saw this entry in MLQ's site:
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UP n student Says:
June 27th, 2008 at 11:17 am
One of the mistakes of the Pinas government is to exempt all OCW income from taxes. “Yes” to exempting the first million pesos (so there would be no tax-burden on many Pinas OCW’s),. But even with that exemption, there would have been tax-revenue from the better-paid OCW-doctors, managers, financial analysts, dentists, petroleum- and software-engineers that could have been spent for capital improvements on maritime safety (also to build new schools and for low-cost medicine programs for the elderly).
Pepito: I disagree with that UP student.
Pay taxes to Philippines? Twenty pesos of every hundred tax pesos disappears in graft and corruption, bakit pa?
Wala na talagang uuwi sa atin kung bubuwisan pa ang halagang nabuwisan na.
For every 100 dollars that I earn here in the US, 32 dollars goes to the government. I am left with 68 dollars that I have to subdivide to pay for our house, car(s), kids education,utilities,food, not to mention the monthly checque that I cut for my family and my wife's family in the Philippines. And what about my retirement? Does one really expect to work until the day he dies?
For the last 12 years, all I can think about is to go back home to the Philippines and stay there for good.
This dream is fast turning into a nightmare. At the rate things are going, I may just decide to stay here for good.
TO ANONYMOUS
Don't lose hope. I believe what is happening to us is simply cleansing and will make us grow. Our country will be great.
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