Prayer to the Virgin of Perpetual Assistance (17 February 1981)

On Tuesday, 17 February 1981, the Holy Father offered a prayer to the Virgin of Perpetual Assistance at Baclaran, entrusting to her his papal ministry. 

Today I'm allowed to come back here for the second time in my life. The first time I stopped here on my way to the Eucharistic Congress in Australia; Celebrating Mass late in the evening I witnessed the truly filial devotion and immense trust which you, O Mother of Perpetual Help, enjoy among the faithful among the people who live in this great capital of the Philippines. 

Today, I come as Successor of Saint Peter to the See of Rome, since, through the inscrutable designs of Divine Providence, it pleased Christ to call me to universal ministry in the Church. I come, in the footsteps of my predecessor Paul VI, as a pilgrim to the Churches and peoples of the Far East. I come to raise to the honors of the altars, far from Rome and together in close union with it, the Martyrs who offered their lives for Christ in Nagasaki in the years 1633, 1634 and 1637. Among them was the Filipino Lorenzo Ruiz, the first son of the Church of this land that rises to the glory of beatification. 

To you, O Queen of Martyrs and Mother of the Church, I wish to entrust in a special way my papal ministry and its various meanings. It is from the blood of the martyrs that from the very beginning, the Church of your Son was born and grew vigorously, the Church of Jesus Christ, with whose Sacrifice on the Cross You, Mother, cooperated with the maternal sacrifice of your heart (cf. Lumen Gentium , 58). 

In fact, there are numerous examples that we find of this witness borne by the holy and blessed martyrs in different parts of the great Asian continent. The foundations of the faith sealed in blood now seem deeply rooted in its history. But it is not we human beings who can measure and say whether these are sufficient foundations for building the service of the Gospel and of the Church in these vast lands and in the innumerable surrounding islands. We leave this judgment to God's mercy, to the Heart of our Redeemer and Lord, and to the Holy Spirit who guides humanity and the Church through the testimony of blood towards the Kingdom of love and truth. 

However, this immense work before us, I, John Paul II, with full awareness of my human weakness and unworthiness, wish, as I always do, to entrust to you, Mother of Christ and of the Church, who with your unceasing maternal love watch over it everywhere, ready to intervene with every form of help in every human heart and in the midst of all peoples. And especially among those who are hardest tried by suffering, poverty and all sorts of afflictions. 

Thus, at the beginning of my pastoral visit to the Far East, I commend to you and entrust to you with absolute confidence, as to the Mother of our Redeemer, all the nations and peoples of Asia and the surrounding islands. I recommend and entrust the Church to you, particularly in those places where she is in the greatest difficulty, where her mission is not exactly understood, nor is her irrepressible desire to serve individuals and peoples. I commend to you today, at the beginning of this pilgrimage, the hospitable Philippines and the Church which, being rooted here in a particularly vigorous way, also equally strongly feels her missionary responsibility. May it not lack the necessary strength for the work of evangelization. May she persevere, like the faithful servant who constantly awaits the coming of the Lord, 

Mother of Perpetual Help, accept this humble offering and place it in the Heart of Your Son, You, to whom, when You were under the Cross on Calvary, each of us was entrusted as to his own Mother. Amen. 

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