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'Treasure' of the Sands:

Maronite Church Celebrates Its Founding Saint

by Dawn Eden 

 

Not every saint can claim to have received a fan letter from St. John Chrysostom. But then, few saints have had the impact of St. Maron, the desert hermit who became the father of the Maronite Church, whose faith was described by Pope Benedict during his recent visit to Cyprus as a “treasure,” a “great inheritance” and a “precious gift.”

 

The Holy Father’s praise for the Maronite Church, an Eastern Catholic church in full communion with Rome, came as the church commemorates a milestone: 2010 marks the 1,600th anniversary of St. Maron’s death. I asked Bishop Gregory J. Mansour of the Brooklyn-based Eparchy of St. Maron his thoughts about the papal visit and the continuing influence of the church’s founder upon Maronites today.

 

“St. Maron was both an ‘open air’ hermit and a priest,” living in what is now known as northern Syria, Bishop Mansour said. “His was a life of fasting, prayer and spiritual succor for souls that came to him.”

 

Among those souls was St. John Chrysostom, the great Doctor of the Church, who wrote to St. Maron in 405 while exiled in Armenia expressing his “great affection” for the hermit and asking his prayers.

 

The passing of St. Maron in 410 marked “a turning point in Church history for many people of the Middle East,” Bishop Mansour said. “At the time of St. Maron’s death, there were 800 monks and several women disciples who made up the first ‘Maronites.’ This monastic community was both contemplative and missionary in spirit, founding more monasteries as well as evangelizing the villages of Lebanon and the Middle East.”

 

The Maronites were among the staunchest defenders of the doctrine of the Council of Chalcedon, which declared that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, having two complete natures in one person. In the seventh century, with the absence of a Chalcedonian bishop for Antioch, St. John Maron, a member of the city’s Maronite community, was chosen to be the city’s patriarch. With his ascent, Bishop Mansour observed, “the Maronite monastic movement became a church – the only church that takes her name from a saint.”

 

Pope Benedict, at his first Wednesday audience since returning from Cyprus last week, spoke of the Maronites as having “often suffered difficult trials in order to remain faithful to their specific Christian tradition, the history and art of which represent a cultural heritage for all humankind.”

 

His words reflected how members of the Maronite Church, as the largest Catholic community of the region, continue to play a central role in the pastoral care of Christians in the Middle East. Located mainly in Lebanon, the church has helped welcome other Christian communities to the nation, which retains its historic role as a haven for the region’s minorities.

 

If you enter a Maronite Church anywhere in the world, including in the United States, you will hear prayers recited in Syriac, a dialect of the Aramaic that Jesus spoke.

 

“Maronites are familiar with the culture and language of our Lord, and do all they can to preserve both,” Bishop Mansour said. “The chanting and the poetry of the liturgy are what touch visitors first, as well as the deep reverence and love that shines through the liturgy.”

 

Another distinctive aspect of Maronite prayer is its contemplative focus, a mark of its desert heritage. The Maronite liturgy allows a kind of “breathing space” for the individual to encounter the presence of God.

 

“St. Maron’s love for solitude is what brought people to seek his help,” Bishop Mansour noted. “He sought God alone ... and people sought him to encounter God.”

 

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(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)