On the first Saturday in November (6th), Dean George Sabra’s ‘Contemporary Eastern Churches’ class boarded a small bus at NEST early in the a.m. that drove us up into the northern range of Mount Lebanon. Along the way we picked up Fr. Elie Azzi, a Maronite priest and historian of his tradition, Lebanon’s largest Christian church and one of its oldest indigenous Christian institutions.
Fr. Azzi was our guide to the Qadisha Valley, also called the “Valley of the Saints.’ Carved into the sheer rock faces of the mountain he would led us down are a series of tiny monasteries and churches that once housed the patriarchs, monks, and many members of the Maronite Christian community when they sought a separate space from their Muslim overlords.
The Maronites (their name does not refer to Mary the mother of Jesus but to Saint Maroon, died 410 CE) are one of the most distinctive Christian churches in the Middle East. Their cultural and theological heritage is Syriac and Antiochene, yet their Christology is Chalcedonian; they are a patriarchal and monastic church that places a high value on asceticism as the truest form of the Christian life; they have acknowledged the primacy of the Pope in Rome since the time of the Crusades; they are grounded in Lebanon as their physical and spiritual home (although many Maronite Christians live in the Lebanese Diaspora). The Maronites have achieved a distinctive balance between both eastern and western Christianity. Their patriarch and monks live their ascetic lives very close to the laity, creating strong bonds of solidarity between laity and clergy.
On the trip up I sat with the Rev. Nabil Shehadi, Vicar of All Saints’ International Congregation (www.allsaintsbeirut.com) and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Representative to the Oriental Orthodox Churches. Rev. Nabil’s family is Lebanese Presbyterian. He studied architecture and became a licensed architect in London, England for many years, some of which overlapped with the Lebanese civil war. During that time, he discovered the Church of England, studied theology, and became an Anglican priest. His congregation in Beirut is located very near the Mediterranean in the first Christian church rebuilt after the civil war.
Rev. Nabil is also the Alpha Advisor for Lebanon, a great proponent of the Alpha Program (founded in England) as a means of evangelization. Unlike many other countries in the Middle East, citizens of Lebanon are free to convert from their parents’ religion to another. And as Rev. Nabil explained to me in the words of another Christian leader in this region, some Christians have been thoroughly ‘sacramentalized’ but not ‘evangelized.’ As an Anglican by adult decision, he seeks to create opportunities for other Lebanese to learn about the Christian message in creative new ways.
After driving up extremely inclined mountain roads for several hours, our bus trip ended on the top of a peak with absolutely gorgeous views. (No pun intended…there were some very steep gorges.) Fr. Azzi, Dean Sabra and Mrs. Sabra (Lydia is a teacher of music at the International School on the American Univ. of Beirut campus) led us down a series of rocky, steep steps with scattered rock fragments on almost every step. I was glad I had taken a course in mountain climbing during college on our way down. Some in our group had brought hiking poles to steady themselves on the descent. We each carried most of the food and water we would have for the daylight hours.
One of the goals on our descent of the mountain was to visit the hermitage of Fr. Dario Escobar, a priest from Columbia who became a Maronite to pursue the ancient way of the Christian hermits who have inhabited Lebanon for more than 1500 years. When we finally reached the hermitage, Fr. Azzi led us into a tiny chapel where we could cool down from the descent and pray. He quietly explained to us that two years ago, Fr. Escobar had been photographed by someone who had put his picture up on Facebook. This led to an overwhelming number of people climbing down to the hermitage to visit (and then disturb) Fr. Escobar in his life of daily prayer and study. According to Fr. Azzi, Fr. Escobar had spoken to no one for two years. We quietly enjoyed the cool chapel and then moved further down the trail.
Some of us who had just seen the new film, The Social Network, were not surprised that the global reach of Facebook had even disturbed the life of a hermit for Christ in this remote part of Lebanon. The power of technology both intimately connects us to one another and alienates us from our souls all at the same time unless we share in a power greater than technique alone.
But Rev. Nabil and Christian, one of the NEST students from the Univ. of Göttingen, stayed behind to explore some more of the hermitage. Suddenly they realized someone else was with them…Fr. Dario. He spoke with them and shared some stories from his student days. After this encounter, Christian ran to catch up with the larger group to tell us he had been one of the first persons the hermit had spoken with after two years of retreat. Meanwhile Rev. Nabil who is an excellent hiker rounded up some members of our group that was now strung out along a steep mountain path.
Along the way, we stopped at another tiny church that commemorates the life of a Maronite young woman who impersonated a man in order to become a monk. None of her brother monks discovered her secret and she was allowed to join the order on the mountain. After some years a woman in a local village accused the ‘monk’ of having fathered her child. As an act of penance, the monk raised the child as ‘his’ own. When the monk finally died, her secret was discovered and she was remembered as a saint for holy life exemplified in the fact that she had cared for a child not her own just like a parent.
Some students in our group found this hagiography hard to believe. But in terms of historical gender studies, a woman who convincingly impersonates a man is not totally unique in history. (Some will remember the Barbara Streisand film of a few decades ago about a young Jewish woman who impersonates a man in order to enter Orthodox rabbinical studies.)
We stopped at another monastery and church for lunch, where we met some other hikers from different countries. Overall I was struck with how few hikers were on this mountain on a gorgeous fall day.
As we continued to hike down to a more flat, mountain path that ran along an icy stream where there were tiny cafes, Fr. Azzi would pause and show us in his binoculars tiny monasteries carved into the cliffs of the mountain. The medieval Maronites must have been excellent rock climbers or built wooden cranes with baskets to lower monks into these tiny spaces.
The ascetic, mountain existence of the Maronites exemplifies the fiercely independent spirit of the Lebanese Christians, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. In the mountains the Maronites were safe from the armies of their Muslim rulers and escaped the taxes levied on Christian and Jewish citizens of Islamic empires. Christians were the majority population of Lebanon until sometime in the 1960s, and Lebanon emerged from the Ottoman Empire as a new Christian majority nation just after WWI. Seats in the Lebanese Parliament are still divided 50 / 50 between Christian and Muslim political representatives due in part to the Maronite heritage. Their church still owns about 23% of all properties in the nation. They also have a reputation as fierce soldiers and fighters in the complex political history of this cross roads of the ancient and modern Middle East.
As the sun was beginning to set, we boarded the bus for the long drive back to Beirut. Along the way we passed through tiny mountain villages where most inhabitants are still Maronites. When we asked Fr. Azzi for some good resources on the history of his Church, he said the best texts are in Arabic, French, Russian, and German. Most books on the Maronites in English are written for the busy tourist or pilgrim, not the student or scholar of Eastern Churches.
When I return to Chicago, the Maronites are another eastern Christian church I want to rediscover in my own city where the Diaspora of Christians from the Middle East continues.
