Our Lady of Lebanon - The Story of a Shrine

Lourdes, Guadalupe, and Fatima. The world reveres these Marian shrines. But over a century ago, a new Marian shrine arose in the hills of Lebanon. This is the Catholic Frequency podcast. Follow us online at catholicfrequency.com, and follow our YouTube channel, and find us on Spotify and Apple podcasts.

One of the world's most foremost sites dedicated to Mary, the mother of Jesus, is Our Lady Of Lebanon. And the story of this very special place actually begins during the lifetime of Jesus, who visited Lebanon during his ministry with his mother. Eighteen centuries later, a dogmatic proclamation by pope Pius the ninth, coupled with biblical history, would inspire the building of Our Lady Of Lebanon. Sacred scripture records that Jesus preached and healed in the pagan cities of Tyre and Sidon. Today, in Southern Lebanon, there's a shrine called Our Lady Of Montara, which means waiting in Arabic.

This marks the place where Mary stayed in a grotto while Jesus was preaching. Jewish women, including Mary, remained outside the cities of Tyre and Sidon to avoid ritual impurity. The healing of the Syrophoenician woman's daughter found in the gospels of Mark and Matthew occurred in this region. In the year 03/26, Saint Helena donated an icon of the Virgin to the sanctuary, which still resides in the Shrine Of Our Lady Of Montara today. But 40 miles north of Montara, in the hills outside of Beirut, rises a much more recognizable and famous Marian shrine.

In fact, it is one of the world's foremost devotional sites dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Beyond the historical travels of Jesus and Mary, the shrine's creation directly ties into the 1854 dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which was promulgated by Pope Pius the ninth. His proclamation ignited worldwide devotion, which was reinforced by Mary's eighteen fifty eight Lord's Apparitions, where she identified herself as the Immaculate Conception. This fervor in the Catholic world set the stage for the shrine's construction many decades later, when the Maronite patriarch Elias Hoyek, who dreamed of a grand shrine in Lebanon, decided that the approaching fiftieth anniversary of the Immaculate Conception dogma was the perfect time for a shrine to become a reality. And so it did.

Today, his vision is perched over 2,000 feet above sea level, and it's known as the Shrine Of Our Lady Of Lebanon. It features a 15 ton bronze statue of Mary, arms outstretched toward Beirut. The French made statue is 28 feet tall on a 65 foot cedar shaped base, and it crowns the skies over the city of Harusa. Today, the site draws pilgrims via a nine minute cable car ride up to the top of the hill. This slow ascent calms the soul for what awaits.

At the top, visitors find a chapel called Mother of Light, carved with cedarwood. The adjacent basilica, which can accommodate 3,000 believers, host nine daily masses and twenty four hour adoration. After its completion in nineteen o eight, the Maronite patriarch crowned Mary Queen of Lebanon. Pope Pius The Twelfth sent a legate in 1954. John Paul the second visited in 1997, and Pope Benedict the sixteenth prayed for peace there in 02/2007.

On the first Sunday of every May, the feast of Our Lady of Lebanon occurs. Around the world, this is when Maronite children receive their first communion. And at the shrine in Lebanon, pilgrims are drawn to mass. Today, the bronze statue at the Shrine Of Our Lady Of Lebanon gazes over the sea with arms open to all, attracting pilgrims who pray, leave flowers, and wanna be part of a legacy that spans biblical times, papal proclamations, and Maronite devotion. This is the Catholic Frequency podcast.

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