According to tradition, Our Lady of Perpetual Help is considered the oldest icon in the Church. It is believed that the first icon of the Virgin of the Passion (or Our Lady of Perpetual Help) was in fact painted by St. Luke. And who better than he to paint this sorrowful image of Mother and Son?

For, St. Luke, of all the Gospel writers, wrote most personally of the Lord in his infancy up to his death on the Cross. So much so, with details that only the Mother of Jesus could know. The likelihood is that Our Lady herself must have shared them with him. It is further believed that St. Luke painted the icon of Our Blessed Mother and her Son Jesus while she was still in Jerusalem. When he showed the finished painting to her, it is said, she blessed him and the icon, saying that her grace would accompany the icon.

And so it has, with countless miracles accompanying the icon wherever it has been venerated, asking the intercession of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. There were so many miracles and so many petitions answered that in the year 1207, Pope Innocent III declared that the Virgin Mary's soul had to have entered the icon, as she was so radiantly beautiful, and the icon had been such a powerful instrument in bringing about so many miracles through Our Lady's intervention. The icon begins its travels.