Our Lady of Lebanon is a Roman Catholic Church of the Maronite Rite located in Miami, FL. It had its official beginnings on September 8, 1973, a day on which we celebrate two feasts of the Virgin Mary: Her Nativity and Her title as the Patroness of Cuba, the Virgin of Charity (La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre).

Maronite Rite

The Maronite church, one of the largest Eastern rite churches, is prominent especially in modern Lebanon. The church is in canonical communion with the Roman Catholic Church and is the only Eastern rite church that has no counterpart outside that union. The Maronites trace their origins to St. Maron, or Maro (Arabic: Mārūn), a Syrian hermit of the late 4th and early 5th centuries, and St. John Maron, or Joannes Maro (Arabic: Yūḥannā Mārūn), patriarch of Antioch in 685–707, under whose leadership the invading Byzantine armies of Justinian II were routed in 684, making the Maronites a fully independent people.

The immediate spiritual head of the Maronite church after the pope is the “patriarch of Antioch and all the East,” residing in Bikirkī, near Beirut. The church retains the ancient West Syrian liturgy, often delivered in Syriac even though the vernacular tongue of the modern Maronites is Arabic.

Maronite Identity

Today, as before, our Church is striving to be loyal to the mystery (living the mystery of salvation through Jesus Christ and witnessing to Him in the Antiochene Domain and in the Countries of Expansion) from which it sets off and on which every genuine Christian identity is built. Inasmuch as these elements are tied to the person of Jesus Christ, who “is the same, yesterday, today and forever”, (Hebrews 13:8) they take the place of a throbbing heart in the conscience of Maronites.

It must not be remiss in the minds of the sons and daughters of the Maronite Church, as they seek to throw light upon the elements of their identity, that their Patriarchal Church is, before all else, the realization of the mystery of the One, Universal, Holy and Apostolic Church in the special environment in which they were called to bear witness to their Apostolic faith and to their evangelical values, and consequently not willing to be led, in their endeavor, into mere cultural, national or political considerations.