On the twenty-fourth of March every year, the Church celebrates the feast of the Annunciation, the Annunciation of our Lady, the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, the Mother of Man, and the Mother of the Believers.

The act of the Annunciation in itself constitutes a unique event in the course of the Christian faith as well as in the course of human salvation, as the Lord chose His servant Mary from among all the women of the world to bear in her womb the child who will bear the sins of the world.

How great is the good news and how great were those moments, when the angel of the Lord came to Mary, and announced to her that she would be the mother of God, the mother of the Savior.

No mind and no words can describe the feelings that may have stirred in the heart and soul of Mary as she ascended the path of holiness.

She is the chosen one who will give the world what it has not tired of waiting for and this for many millennia.

How meek and wise are you  O Mary, for the Lord to choose you as a mediator for the coming of the Savior into the world!

Visits MECC in Beirut

A delegation from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), including Reverend Gabi Aelabouni, Director of the ELCA Middle East and North Africa Department, and Ms. Marie Anne Sliwinski, Senior Director, ELCA Building Resilient Communities office, visited the offices of the Middle East Council of Churches’ General Secretariat in Beirut, on Monday 20 March 2023. The MECC Secretary General Dr. Abs welcomed the delegation.

On the occasion of Mother's Day, Reverend Dr. Rima Nasrallah, Coordinator of the Eco Justice Unit at the Middle East Council of Churches, prepared a special Prayer and recited it during the Sunday Service, on Sunday 19 March 2023, at the National Evangelical Church in Beirut.

Below you can find the text of the Prayer:

God, you have loved us as a father and a mother. You gave us life and sheltered us with your compassionate wings. We come to you with our concerns trusting in your care.

We thank you on this Mothers’ Day, for the gift of motherhood and the intimate bond that unites a person with a mother. We thank you for all the mother around us and for their efforts to preserve the life of their children and guide them towards you.

We confess that the role of the mother is a very difficult these days. We therefore pray for all the mothers who are trying to balance between the demands of life, work and care for their children…

As if man-made destruction was not enough, nature came to add to the tragedies of our people in the East, the East of Christianity, where the disciples were  first called Christians, and from which the message spread from its shores and across the ruggedness of its mountains, to the whole world.

Siege, destruction and homelessness, for which the East of Antioch has always been a scene, starting with the devastation of Palestine, to the devastation of Lebanon, to the dismemberment of Iraq and the Levant, were all man-made, and  this according to previous staging and design.

What is this coincidence that these countries, one after the other, were systematically destroyed, their societies disintegrated, their economies dissolved, and their peoples displaced, thus becoming a theater of military operations, a habitat for terrorism, and a scope of violence that is unparalleled in modern history?

Within the activities of an international conference held in Rome and in which the Middle East Council of Churches participated, the MECC Secretary General Dr. Michel Abs and a delegation from the Council, met His Holiness Pope Francis in St. Peter's Square in the Vatican in Rome, after the General Audience of His Holiness gave, on Wednesday 8 March 2023.

During the meeting, the Secretary General, Dr. Abs and the MECC delegation saluted His Holiness Pope Francis and expressed their appreciation for His Holiness and their intention to ask for an appointment in order to visit His Holiness at a later time.

Meet His Eminence Cardinal Kurt Koch and a Delegation from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity

The Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches Dr. Michel Abs was accompanied by His Eminence Bishop Munib Younan, Honorary President of the Middle East Council of Churches, in a visit to the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in Rome. They met with His Eminence Cardinal Kurt Koch, the Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, His Eminence Bishop Brian Farrell, Secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, and Father Hyacinthe Desteville, an official in the Eastern section at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

on Charity TV

Father Nicolas Bustros the Paulist, Doctor of Dogmatic Theology and Associate Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches, was the guest of Father George Salloum, Lebanese Missionary, in an episode entitled “Trust, You Are the Church” on Charity TV, as part of “Trust and Arise” program, prepared by the Congregation of Consecrated Men and Women in Lebanon. You can watch this episode, in which Father Bustros spoke about the Theological concept of the Church, in the video.