Free Republic

A road trip on a weekend and making sure you can still get to Mass can sometimes result in a very pleasant surprise and a holy experience.Quite recently Marjorie (my fiancée) and I were returning home over the weekend from a car trip to Ohio. Not wanting to miss Mass, we looked online at Mass times for the areas we would be traveling through on Saturday afternoon. Expecting to be driving near Uniontown, PA about four o’clock, we found several churches that had four o’clock Saturday afternoon Masses listed.But our travel plans were slightly delayed driving over the mountainous region...

LAWRENCE, Mass., July 5 /PRNewswire/ -- In his only stop in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, His Beatitude and Eminence Nasrallah Peter Cardinal Sfeir, Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, will pay an historic visit to St. Anthony's Maronite Church in Lawrence, MA July 12-14.The visit, part of an approximately month long tour of Maronite religious communities in the United States, marks the first time that Cardinal Sfeir has visited St. Anthony church in Lawrence, MA, and is only the fourth time that a Maronite patriarch has journeyed to the United States.Cardinal Sfeir will arrive at Lawrence Airport on the...

The Maronite Patriarch, Nassrallah Cardinal Sfeir, made a strong appeal during mass in Bkerke, telling “all Maronites to start a fresh journey on the path of true spirituality based on reconciliation, tolerance and mutual forgiveness.”Referring to last week’s incidents that caused material damages and spiritual harm in various Maronite places of worship and convents in Beirut, Patriarch Sfeir said that those in charge of public security must guarantee maximum protection and exert extreme vigilance to prevent any new civil war that might undermine Lebanon’s mission, which is, as Pope John Paul II put it, to be a “message country” to...

Saint Maron Father of the Maronite Catholic Church All that is known about Maron, the spiritual father and protector of the Maronites comes from Theodoret, the bishop of Cyr. In approximately 444, Theodoret undertook the project of writing a religious history about his religion. Theodoret never knew Maron personally, but only through the disciples of this holy man. He described Maron as "the one who has planted for God the garden which flourishes now in the region of Cyr." Little is known of the birth or youth of Maron because Theodoret was unconcerned about that aspect of his life. He...