NNA - Maronite Patriarch, Cardinal Bechara Boutros al-Rahi, presided this morning over the Mass of the Annunciation in the "Church of Our Lady" in Bkirki.

In his religious sermon marking the occasion, the Patriarch said: "It is no coincidence that both Muslims and Christians chose to mark the feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, by an official decree dated October 27, 2010, as a joint national holiday...For all, she is a 'mother', the most generous and holiest of mothers, who gathers her sons and daughters and unites them."

He added that the saints and utopians in Lebanon's history lived in the past in full communion, deep union with God and heroic unity with all people, and they lived that way with the power of love in their hearts. "The situation of our people in Lebanon today is tragic: economically, financially, socially and morally, with most of them living on their preserved faith...This tragedy stems, as everyone knows and acknowledges, from poor political performance, corruption, the worship of narrow and factional interests, and the disregard for the oppressed people...," al-Rahi went on.

"Here are the fields of our work and our mission: fueling the dynamism of spiritual, pastoral, and apostolic work; and having more solidarity in helping our people financially, morally, and in daily-living, and striving in various ways to strengthen the unity between those involved in politics and the civil authorities, urging them to assume their duties after acknowledging their mistakes, their failures, and their direct responsibility for the impoverishment, humiliation, displacement, and death of citizens in their homes due to their hunger, and the inability to buy medicine and hospitalization, and their desperation to commit suicide due to their inability to secure food and water for their children," the Patriarch added regretfully.

"These officials are expected to acknowledge, before God and the people, their responsibility for the destruction of the state and the republic by their refusal to elect a president for the republic, and by their obstruction of the regularity of constitutional institutions," al-Rahi firmly underscored.

=========R.Sh.