Mother of Perpetual Help Feast Honours Mary and Our Heritage as Ukrainian Catholics in Canada
Today’s Feast of the Mother of Perpetual Help is relatively new in our Ukrainian Greek Catholic calendar.
It honours a Miraculous Icon which is housed in Rome. This sacred image also has long had ties to the Ukrainian Community in Saskatchewan. It was only on December 11, 2017, that Patriarch Sviatoslav decreed that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church all over the world would honour her each year on the first Sunday of July.
Exactly 152 years earlier, Pope Pius IX granted a relatively unknown Icon, likely of Cretan origin, to the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, commonly known as the Redemptorist Fathers. This icon had been long forgotten in a religious house in Rome but Pius wanted to give her an opportunity to shine. On December 11, 1865, he gave her a new name and a new owner. Our Lady of Perpetual Help was entrusted to the care and promotion of the Redemptorist Fathers.
At that time the Redemptorists were an exclusively Latin Catholic missionary order, but within 50 years they would find themselves working with Ukrainian Catholics — first in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and then in Ukraine.
This is largely due to the work of Fr. Achille Delaere, a Belgian Redemptorist priest who first encountered the Ukrainian people and their church while studying Polish in Lviv. Soon after his studies were complete, he was sent to the newly founded monastery in Brandon Manitoba, attached to the still standing St. Augustine of Canterbury Roman Catholic Church.
When he arrived in Canada, he set about serving the many immigrant communities who had made a home in the expanding Canadian West. It didn’t take long for him to notice the Ukrainians again. They stood out — for the way they dressed, the way they spoke, and the way they worshipped.
They also stood out because they were so badly in need of culturally-specific spiritual care, as different groups tried to pull them in different directions. Some Roman Catholics wanted to make them Roman Catholic. Protestants wanted to make them Protestant. The Orthodox wanted to make them Orthodox. Secularists wanted to make them secular.
Delaere was a tireless promoter of the Gospel — and he knew someone had to address this problem. He began visiting their homes, learning their rituals, and adopting their customs. He felt that the only way to help the Ukrainians in Canada was to become Ukrainian himself — not to pull them away from who they were.
It was often challenging but eventually he began to gain trust. The Pope saw value in his work and gave him permission to become a Ukrainian Catholic priest for Ukrainian Catholics. Thus began — in its seedling form — the Ukrainian Catholic branch of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. He settled in Yorkton, establishing a church and monastery there dedicated to Our Mother of Perpetual Help. From there he went out and organized communities, established churches, taught true doctrine, and defended the Ukrainian settlers from all who would make them less Ukrainian and less Catholic. He spent the remainder of his life serving the Ukrainian communities of Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
As a Redemptorist, Fr. Delaere promoted the Icon of the Mother of Perpetual Help wherever he went. He knew well that when Pope Pius IX had given it to the Redemptorist Fathers his specific instruction had been to make her known. Now Fr. Delaere was doing his part in ensuring she was loved among the Ukrainian Catholics of Canada too.
The Ukrainian Redemptorists were invited back to Ukraine by Metropolitan Sheptytsky and they grew into a very important religious order in that country. They gave the church many martyrs during the years of persecution. They also have given us a special love for Our Mother of Perpetual Help.
Years later, Blessed Vasyl Velychovsky, a Redemptorist and spiritual son of Fr. Achille Delaere, wrote a book about Our Mother of Perpetual Help, where he tells many stories of miracles and glories attributed to her. You can find many resources online about the history and spirituality of this icon.
Most importantly, he attributes to her the ability to soften hearts and to turn wayward souls back to God. He encourages us all to ask her for conversions and to draw people back to her son. May Our Mother of Perpetual Help bring our people back to church, revivify our communities, and heal our world.
Sources:
http://www.cssr.com/english/whoarewe/iconstory.shtml
file:///C:/Users/Communications/Downloads/admin, +2004.6. Laverdure+article.pdf
For Bl. Vasyl Velychkovsky’s Book on the Mother of Perpetual Help:
https://www.cssr.news/2017/12/ugcc-established-a-new-feast-of-our-lady-of-perpetual-help/
www.skeparchy.org
