Blessed Patriarch Estephan Douaihy’s cause for sainthood has returned to the Vatican less than two years after his beatification.
It is understood that the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome has received a new account of a medically unexplained healing attributed to his intercession.
A young non-Christian boy who had an incurable neurological condition is the subject of the reported miracle.
Monsignor Estephan Franjieh, who has been closely following Blessed Douaihy’s cause for sainthood, informed me in a phone conversation that the file of the new miracle was sealed in Lebanon during Passion Week and transported to Rome in the week following Easter Sunday.
The news of the newly lodged miracle comes as the Maronite community in Australia is preparing to celebrate the feast of Blessed Douaihy for the second time since his beatification, with a solemn Mass celebrated by Bishop Antoine-Charbel Tarabay at Our Lady of Lebanon Co-Cathedral in Harris Park.
Douaihy’s feast is celebrated on 3 May, the day he was born into eternal life. It is also the day on which the Maronite Church celebrates the Feast of Our Lady of Lebanon. Douaihy’s death during the Marian month was the final link in a chain of events in his life that are mystically connected to the Virgin Mary, to whom he had a special devotion.
Douaihy was born on 2 August 1630, 13 days before the Feast of the Assumption; ordained to the priesthood on the Feast of the Annunciation on 25 March 1656; elected Patriarch of the Maronite Church on 20 May 1670; and died on 3 May 1704.
Furthermore, while a student at the Maronite College in Rome, he was marked to return to Lebanon due to a serious eyesight impairment that disrupted his studies.
He prayed fervently to Mary, asking for her intercession to restore his sight so that he might continue his vocation. In return, he made her a vow that he never revealed.
Blessed Douaihy was a true Marian Patriarch, yet his Mariology remains largely unexplored. He composed a lengthy beatitude to Mary in a sermon on the Magnificat, echoing the discourse of the Syriac Fathers, who often expressed their theology in poetic form.
“Blessed is your womb that was a haven for the Almighty Lord,” Douaihy writes in his beatitude to Mary.
“Blessed are your hands that wrapped around the Lord of Greatness; Blessed is your lap that embraced the Divine Fire; Blessed are your knees that bore the Bearer of Heaven and Earth; Blessed are your breasts that nourished the Saviour of all the living; Blessed is your mouth that kissed the Son of God; Blessed are your ears that heard His words; Blessed is your nose that smelt the Divine Fragrance; Blessed are your eyes that saw the One whom the Cherubim hide their faces from seeing.”
In another work, Douaihy describes Mary as the most dignified of women, whom God honoured “above the Holy of Holies, and preferred her over the Chariot of the Cherubim in which the divinity dwelt in glory and likeness, but in Mary’s womb, in nature and truth, where the body and spirit of the Lord were united in the Person of the Son of God, and through them, the indescribable mystery has been perfected.”
Douaihy’s narrative of the theology of the body through Mary takes on a further depth in her complete submission to the will of God.
Her obedience, surrender, and readiness to fully cooperate with the plan of salvation exalted her above all creation, and made her a source of sustenance for souls.
He likens Mary to the four rivers cited in the Old Testament (Gen 2:10), which made life prosper on earth.
“Just as God designed that a spring would emerge from Paradise and divide into four rivers to water the entire face of the earth,” Douaihy writes, Jesus Christ “made His mother a channel of mercy and spring of life, so that through her, He would pour out His goodness and blessings on all thirsty souls.”
In this discourse, the human body is exalted through Mary, in whose body, the body of the Son of God made flesh was implanted.
According to Douaihy, the glory of the body begins with Mary from whom Christ is incarnate, and reaches its ultimate fulfilment in the body of Christ, given to us in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
In the Eucharistic communion, as Douaihy writes, the human becomes one with Christ through the flesh He took from Mary, and Christ, who is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit, makes the oneness of the human person with the Trinity a reality.
Fr Ghassan-Hanna Nakhoul is the Assistant Parish Priest of Our Lady of Lebanon Cathedral, Harris Park, and the author of Patriarch Douaihy and the Trinitarian Paradigm in the Maronite Mass.
