It honours Our Lady of Luxembourg, Maria Mutter Jesu, Consolatrix Afflictorum, Patrona Civitatis et Patriae Luxemburgensis.

Students from the Jesuit college carried a wooden, 73 cm-high statue of the Virgin Mary in front of the city walls on the Glacis.

Popular tradition links the consolation to two miraculous occurrences which happened during those years in Luxembourg related first to the plague, and the high mortality rate it inflicted on children, and secondly, the Thirty Years War: namely, the miracle of the resurrection of a dead child and a miraculous flood which protected the city from invasion,[3] which ruined the plan of Frenchman Pierre Pillard to dynamite a breach through the walls of the city.

In 1870, Luxembourg became a bishopric, and the old Jesuit church became the cathedral where the devotional statue was venerated and the Oktav celebrated.

In total, as of 2017, 82 masses are celebrated for the entire Luxembourg community: deportees and political prisoners of war, the elderly, couples, the sick, for the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem, to the Benedictines of Clervaux, the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint-Georges, the members of the Consecrated Life, the Luxembourg Armed Forces, the Grand Ducal Police, the municipal council, the vocations ministry and many more.

[17] Members of the Grand Ducal Family then greet the public from the balcony after an aubade performed by the city's orchestra.

The Oktav is the occasion for a solemn veneration of the statue of the Virgin under the iconographic features of the Immaculate Conception, evoking the woman of the Apocalypse with the crescent moon at her feet.

Indeed, in 1639 it was the first time that, to cope with the influx of pilgrims, the statue of the Consolator was brought for a period of eight days to the Jesuit church inside the city.

Since 1766, this image has been placed during the Octave on a special rocaille-style votive altar, made of wrought iron and richly decorated.

Today it is primarily an event where young and old come together to eat, drink and buy various handcrafted items and other memorabilia at the 80 or so stalls on the Knuedler and the Constitution Square.