“Love of the Homeland,” Patriarch Howayek’s Spiritual Testament (2/4)

In keeping with the great Maronite tradition, Patriarch Howayek addressed annual "messages" to his community throughout his patriarchate. The most celebrated of these, and rightly so, is the one he sent in 1930, titled "The Love of the Homeland." This text stands as his spiritual testament. In the twilight of his life — he died at the age of 88 — he revealed, among other things, his pastoral obsession with Lebanon, a country he had helped bring into being, and whose ruling classes seemed to have developed an alarmingly deficient sense of civic duty.

The pamphlet is a passionate lesson in civics, opening with the love of the homeland and closing with elaborate and carefully worded recommendations on distributive justice — a cornerstone of the social justice so dear to Leo XIII.

Drawing on the Latin etymology of the word "homeland," the Patriarch writes: "The Westerners are right to choose the termPatria, derived fromFather, to express what we call in our languageal-Watan, as if a man's love for his homeland were the same as his natural love for his parents."

In the straight tradition of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Patriarch Howayek emphasizes that, just as one owes honor to one's parents, one owes piety and devotion to one's homeland.

Yet reading the message, it becomes immediately apparent that the Patriarch's passionate plea reflects the birth pangs of a nation, as seen through the eyes of a man determined to correct the flaws of its infancy and guide it toward a full understanding of public service.

Why did Patriarch Howayek feel the need to send the Maronites such an exhortation, a mere ten years after the birth of Greater Lebanon? It is not hard to guess. In a nation still taking shape, a nation emerging from its prehistory and taking its first steps into history, this love needed to be understood, internalized, and allowed to mature.

From these fundamental reflections on love of the homeland, the Patriarch went on to develop a lengthy and impassioned civics lesson. "It is clear that those in positions of responsibility were not living up to his vision of citizenship," confirms Sr. Marie-Antoinette Saadé, Superior of the Maronite Sisters of the Holy Family Congregation.

"Contemplating the current situation — the divisions and the misery — weighs the soul down with dejection. We often find ourselves speaking of despair regarding the reforms that must be made, and this breeds indifference: a disposition wholly at odds with the virtue of patriotic love. This virtue calls for a genuine desire to see our homeland more glorious, more civilized, and more devoted to God," the Patriarch wrote.

A "more civilized" homeland

"More civilized." The word was out. In his message, Patriarch Howayek would press the need to cultivate within the Lebanese elite a sense of the common good. He urged those aspiring to public office not to accept positions beyond their actual competence. Like a mirror, his exhortations reflect the alarming distortions and failings of the political and economic society of those early days.

Candice Raymond: "Mission and Identity"

Why so much disorder? The answer lies in part in a 2013 study,Life, Death and Resurrection of the History of Lebanon, or the Vicissitudes of the Phoenix, by historian Candice Raymond (IFPO).

She writes: "In the aftermath of the First World War, when the territorial question arose, the proponents of creating a Lebanese state developed both an economic and a historical argument to secure the annexation to Mount Lebanon — which had enjoyed autonomous sanjak status since 1861 — of various surrounding territories (Tripoli and the Akkar in the north, the Bekaa Valley to the east, Sidon and Jabal Amel in the south), and above all Beirut, which they wished to make the capital of the new state."

The rhetoric of perpetual struggle against oppression was then replaced by a teleology of state power that distinguishes Maronite communal historiography from Maronite Lebanist historiography.

The latter effectively reverses the relationship between the Maronite community and Lebanese territory. It is no longer the community that, through its fight for freedom, bestows a particular identity upon the territory it inhabits, but rather the territory that, by virtue of its morphological and geographical characteristics, imposes a mission and an identity upon its inhabitants.

The geographical parallel between the coastal shoreline and the Lebanese mountain finds its counterpart in a dual functionality of the territory: that of Lebanon as a place of exchange, between the sea and the continent, between East and West, and that of Lebanon as a refuge, a sanctuary of freedom and independence.

The State thus draws its roots from the political experiences that brought these two missions together into unity, while the nation grounds its distinct identity in them.»

These lines are crucial. The history of Lebanon is a weak point in our national education. Lebanese people in 1920, just as those of 2026, have not fully grasped the "reversal" identified by Candice Raymond.

The message of Patriarch Howayek was undoubtedly aimed at drawing a connection between this shift and the need for a new set of values — between the transition from a responsibility toward oneself to a responsibility toward oneself and others; or, more philosophically, the passage from Lebanon's prehistory into its entry into history.

This passage is the one from John Paul II's "Lebanon-message" to "Lebanon-mission," to develop an image that all Lebanese people understand today. Greater Lebanon was in reality a true "sending forth on a mission," and not a "free-for-all" or a "grab-what-you-can" affair, as unfortunately many Lebanese of that era seem to have experienced it.

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Patriarch Howayek, prophet of living together (1/4)