“The innocent man will flourish as the palm-tree flourishes; he will grow to greatness as the cedars grow on Lebanon.” (Psalm 91:13)
After an exchange of greetings, I sit down with Most Reverend Abbot Hady Mahfouz and Fr Fadi Kmeid, attended by the smiling face of Pope Francis hanging on the wall above and by servings of Lebanese coffee. Only after our conversations ended, would I later come to an understanding of how symbolic and appropriate such an introductory setting was.
Having not managed to travel to Lebanon yet despite my deepest desires, I do a poor job of concealing my pre-existing armchair libanophilia while both of my hosts quickly provide more than enough to further fascinate and endear the place to me. The Levantine nation is as sui generis as they come.
In addition to the dramatic variety of landscapes – Abbot Mahfouz told me how his brother had recently been skiing in the mountains in the morning before swimming in the Mediterranean in the afternoon on the same day – Lebanon can boast a profound history which reaches back to ancient Tyr, the Old Testament and the Crusades.
It’s a multifaceted history, replete with multiple religions and a plurality of ethnicities, ranging from Phoenicians and Greeks to the Peninsular Arabians and Armenians.
However, no story of Lebanon can be told without, and no people are more emblematic of the true substance of the nation than, the Maronite Catholics of Mount Lebanon. Contemporary Lebanon originated precisely because of its Catholic majority (and which stemmed from the French; how things have changed, we are reminded, given what happened during the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics).
Hence my meeting with the two clerics to discuss how they serve the liturgical, sacramental and pastoral needs of the international Lebanese diaspora, and to discuss Maronite Catholics in general.
Abbot Mahfouz is the Superior General of the Lebanese Maronite Order (or Baladites, to use an informal Lebanese word meaning “the locals”), a major and historic order of monks in the Levant. Fr Fadi is the Superior of the Monastery of Our Lady of Lebanon in London, who, along with three other monks based there, serves the diaspora community in the UK.
I soon get the sense that the Baladites and monasticism in Lebanon are not like what we’re used to in the West.
“For Maronites, our priests can be married, but roughly half aren’t. Monks are all celibate, because we take the vow of chastity, as well as the vows of poverty and obedience,” reveals Abbot Mahfouz.
The monks are much more mobile than would be typically assumed, being involved in parishes, youth activities and pastoral work. They serve their roles as irreplaceable constituent parts in the religious life of the Maronite Catholic landscape.
This goes back a long way in the traditions of Christian Lebanon and can be explained when one understands the resilient, persecuted nature of the Maronite history.
Fr Fadi describes a defining feature of the Maronite soul: resilience.
“The Crusades would not have survived if it wasn’t for the Maronite Catholics and their support,” Fr Fadi says. “The Mamluks knew this and afterwards sought to punish us. Before the fall of Tripoli in 1289, Maronites were besieged in the mountains for 5 years during a campaign that killed around 5,000 Maronites.”
They fled to the valleys and mountainsides – specifically into the hundreds of little grottos that littered the landscape, Fr Fadi explains (the Lebanese National Museum has mummified bodies from as far back as 1283, which were preserved due to their burial in the sorts of caves that used to be a hiding place for Maronites from all foreign attacks).
“The grottos were prepared in such a way that they could provide food and shelter for all the village. The entrances are so narrow, that one man could defend the entire grotto with a single stick,” he says.
When the community fled to the caves, the Maronites strictly avoided lighting fires to avoid detection by the marauding Islamic forces. Indeed, as Fr Fadi tells me, a traditional Lebanese food – kibbeh nayyeh; a combination of wheat mashed with raw lamb meat – comes from this period. Such food was stocked up in the grottos to provide sustenance in these clandestine and dangerous circumstances when detection meant certain death.
This environment helped Maronite Christianity to blossom and develop its own flavour and character. However, this process of sprouting into a unique and unusual branch on the true vine of the Catholic Church had begun long before.
Maronites trace their name to Saint Maroun, a monk who hailed from the northern Levant in the latter years of the Roman Empire and was a contemporary and friend of Saint John Chrysostom. Maron’s spirituality was highly particular.
A noted ascetic, he followed in the tradition of the Desert Fathers, but broke from them in one important manner: he sought not to merely renounce the physical world but – with a highly Christian incarnational and sacramental sensibility – to use it to bring man closer to God and God closer to man.
This theological sensibility perhaps explains why Maronite monasticism prefers not to pursue the withdrawn eremitism – it does exist in the Maronite Church, a great example is St Charbel, but it is not the general rule as in the Western Church – of other monastic orders.
In practice, this meant that Saint Maroun lived in the open air, beside his chapel and exposed himself to the elements: being battered by the sun, storms and snow of the high Levantine climate. He embraced being a contemplative alongside the quiet and solitude with an incredible missionary and evangelistic zeal – juggling the Carthusian and Jesuit instincts at once.
Speaking to Abbot Mahfouz, it becomes clear this is still very much the Maronite way. It’s more a case of “both…and” rather than “either…or”. There is the sense of a fusion in many aspects of Maronite spirituality, it seems. They combine the best of East and West, with a furious fidelity to Rome.
This relationship was strengthened by the opening of the Maronite College in Rome in 1584. This college provided the Maronite clergy with a priceless education that they carried back to their homeland and spread by opening a school in almost every Maronite village. It is worth mentioning that in 1736 it was obligatory for all Maronite girls and boys to attend school, a practice that was only applied in Europe some 50 years after.
Regarding the difficult relationship Maronites have had over their history with their Islamic neighbours, the clerics remind me that Maronite charitable and educational institutions have always been indiscriminate and catered to Muslims and non-Christians alike. In turn, throughout history Muslims have also borne witness to miracles involving the saints and their intercession.
In turning our attention to matters and events closer to the present day, I asked the Superior General what a new mosaic of Saint Charbel Makhlouf, which has been recently placed in Saint Peter’s Basilica, means to the Maronite community. The Abbot responds with an eager smile.
Our conversation subsequently addresses Saint Charbel himself, a member of Abbot Mahfouz’s order in the 19th century. He was a mysterious miracle-working as well as an anonymously humble figure, akin to Padre Pio or Saint Cuthbert. He’s an enthralling figure about whom there are far too many fascinating details to address here (I hope to cover some of them in a separate article for the Herald).
One thing to note about Saint Charbel is that, among plenty of other miracles, he is particularly credited with the cure of an elderly lady named Nohad El-Chami on 22 of January 1993. Since then, numerous cures and miracles associated with Charbel have been attested as taking place on the same day every month.
Documented miracles paired with official medical records from reputable hospitals in Beirut keep flooding in, with multiple reported miracles having taken place as recently as December 2023. As a result, every month on the 22nd, Christians and believers from other denominations flock to visit the hermitage of Saint Charbel in Annaya to make their devotions.
“You should see it,” says Abbot Mahfouz. “So many people coming and going over the course of the entire day.”
As both clerics express their pleasure that this patron of their homeland and reliable intercessor in the communion of saints is being given recognition in the most prominent of churches throughout Catholic Christendom, I begin to understand that Catholicism is the core of the Maronite identity and consciousness.
As the conversation continues, with the clerics mentioning giant statues of Our Lady (such as the one which overlooks the town of Jounieh) and the world’s largest rosary which is being built at Deir El Ahmar (600 metres long), I see that for Maronites their Catholicism is neither subtle nor incidental. Indeed, the Maronite tradition holds that they were never part of the Eastern schism and remained faithful to Rome throughout their entire history.
They are a Catholic people, through and through.
I ask them about how much the present controversies in the Church, around the likes of liturgical reform and heterodoxy, have affected the Maronites. Abbot Mahfouz says he remains optimistic. The Maronite liturgy was translated into the vernacular, he acknowledges, but great care was taken to preserve the musicality and structure of the liturgy’s traditional form. (A few days following the interview, I happened to meet a young American Latin-Mass-attending Catholic studying in England who was beside himself with praise for the brilliance of the Maronite liturgy.)
I raise how Lebanon is mentioned 71 times in the Bible, and that Our Lord speaks of historical cities of Lebanon – Tyre and Sidon – even saying that it would be “more tolerable” on the day of judgement in those locations than in the villages of Israel. Rather than dwelling on this, though, the two clerics draw my attention to something else but which is related: the cedars.
Within the Qadisha Valley, or Holy Valley – an area of breath-taking beauty peppered with Christian monasteries – lie the aptly-named Cedars of God.
Some of these most elegant of trees are over 5,000 years old. Their wood is counted among one of the most desirable building materials in the world, which explains why in the Bible King Solomon sought the prized cedar from King Hiram – a historical figure totally different from the absurd mythical figure who became the foundational hero of freemasonry – to build the Temple of Jerusalem.
The cedar tree is part of the country’s historic crest, which features prominently on the national flag. It is also a “symbol of eternity” to the Lebanese, says Abbot Mahfouz.
With their roots that reach down for metres into the soil and even into the hard cliffside, these trees have resiliently withstood countless storms across the centuries while continuing to stand strong.
Biblical and ancient, the cedar tree points upwards to God, while providing shade and rest to those who seek them out.
A description one could use about the Maronites and their clerics too.
Photo: Annaya hermitage above the cloud line in Lebanon.
For anyone interested in attending the Maronite Liturgy, Fr Fadi warmly invites Catholic Herald readers to the Mass that his mission provides for Saint Charbel’s Day on the 22nd of every month at 7 p.m. at Our Lady of Lebanon Church, 337 Harrow Road, Maida Hill, London W9 3RB.
