Zahlé, Beqaa Governorate, Lebanon, May 19, 2025
Photo: mospat.ru
A new Russian-style church in eastern Lebanon was consecrated this weekend by seven hierarchs of the Antiochian and Moscow Patriarchates.
The Church of the Unexpected Joy Icon of the Mother of God in Zahlé was built in 2019–2024, and consecrated yesterday, Sunday, May 18, by Metropolitans Anthony of Zahlé and Baalbek, Niphon of Philippopolis (the Antiochian Church’s representative to the Russian Church), Elias of Tyre and Sidon, and Silouan of Mount Lebanon from the Antiochian Church, and Metropolitans Anthony of Volokolamsk (head of the Russian Church’s Department for External Church Relations), Theodore of Volgograd and Kamyshin, and Alexei of Chelyabinsk and Miass of the Russian Orthodox Church, reports the DECR.
The hierarchs celebrated the Great Consecration and the Divine Liturgy in the new church. They were joined by a multitude of clergy, including the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia’s representative in Moscow Archimandrite Seraphim (Shemyatovsky) and the Orthodox Church in America’s representative Archpriest Daniel Andrejuk.
Photo: mospat.ru
The services were celebrated in Arabic, Greek, and Church Slavonic.
In his speech after the Liturgy, Met. Anthony of Volokolamsk emphasized that the construction and consecration of the church is the fulfillment of the long-held dream of Met. Niphon of Philippopolis, who has served in Moscow for 48 years, to have a Russian-style church in his hometown.
In an address read out by the abbot of Balamand Monastery, His Beatitude Patriarch John of Antioch mourns the conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, and Syria, and condemns the kidnapping of the Orthodox and Syriac hierarchs of Aleppo:
We consecrate this church with our eyes on Lebanon and our prayers to God to avert the war whose specter looms from time to time. We reaffirm Lebanon’s mission in unified living among all communities, and we emphasize that the principle of numbers and numerical strength fades before the principle of role and mission. This is what the Lebanese constitution intended, transcending the logic of numbers and the affliction of minority and majority to adopt the principle of role and mission.
We consecrate this church in the heart of Zahlé with our eyes fixed on God in prayer for Syria. Our call and prayers are for Syria and for the establishment of values of unified living among all components of this country. Our call is for Syria to establish a society of solidarity, mutual support, and encounter, and a democratic state that treats all the country's children, spectrums, and components equally under the rule of law.
Photo: mospat.ru
We are in the Bekaa, and our hearts bleed for what is happening in Palestine, specifically in Gaza. Peace to Gaza and to the souls of Gaza’s martyrs and to our Palestinian people who pay with the blood of their children the price of a tragedy entering its eighth decade. All this while some race to support an occupying entity that has stolen the land and expelled people from their homes. Peace to Palestine in all its regions, from the West Bank to Jerusalem to Gaza. Even if the tragedy is prolonged, the decree of history and geography says that the land belongs to the indigenous people who have kept until now the key to a house from which they were expelled and have kept until now the scent of lemon they have not forgotten.
From here, we must also draw attention to the case of the Metropolitans of Aleppo, our brothers John Ibrahim and Paul Yazigi, who have been kidnapped since April 2013 amid a condemnable silence wrapped in rejected logic, as if there is no value to the human being of this East whose dignity is violated through kidnapping, killing, and displacement.
We consecrate this church while our hearts bleed for what is happening between Russia and Ukraine. Our prayers to the Mother of Mercies and Our Lady of Joy to stop the war out of compassion for the human being bleeding from hunger, spirit, violence, killing, and displacement. We lift up prayers for our brothers in the entire Slavic world and ask the Lord of Mercies to be alongside our brothers in faith who are suffering and paying the price of global conflict with their lives. Our prayers are for our brothers in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church who are paying the price of their faith with closed churches, confiscated properties, and prohibited worship practices.
Photo: mospat.ru
Met. Anthony also presented Met. Niphon with a high Church award—the Order of St. Andrew the Iconographer, 2nd degree, in recognition of his work on the construction of the church and in connection with the 65th anniversary of his service in Church orders. As a memento of the consecration, Met. Anthony presented an altar cross as a gift to the church and an episcopal Panagia to Met. Niphon.
A museum located on the church grounds was also consecrated, after which participants in the service were invited by Met. Niphon to a festive dinner.
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