Thursday July 10, we will celebrate the three Massabki Brothers: Francis, Abdul-Mooti, and Raphael as Saints. They were canonized on October 20, 2024. They were lay Maronite Christians of the Church in Damascus who continued living their faith with zeal during the persecutions of 1860, at that time the Ottomans and the people of Damascus burned the Christian quarter and killed more than ten thousand people. The total number of victims in the Syrian capital was 11,000 martyrs. They were martyred along with the Franciscan monks in Damascus on July 10, 1860.
   “Do you love me Peter?” he asked his first priest. “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Feed my sheep, Christ replied. The Massabkis, whom we will celebrate on Thursday, the twelve Apostles whom we are celebrating today died in loving God, and they are certainly a model and inspiration to all of us ere at St. Anthony - Cincinnati. 
The Massabkis died for the One they Love and for those they loved, because love is not a feeling but a decision. 
   One of my priests heroes is St. Maximilian Kolbe, a priest of the Church in Poland, died bringing the sacraments to his “parishioners” in Auschwitz. He had prepared for that final act of love, taking the place of another man condemned to death, by years of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. We re-enter and rehearse those disciplines every season of Great Lent in the hope that penance will refine our capacity to love deeply. St. Paul’s great hymn to Christian love, which most fiancées choose for their wedding ceremony: “Love is patient, love is kind; love is not jealous, it is never rude, it is not quick-tempered.  Love never fails.” Real love must grow deeper than romance, and most brides, I hope, know quite well that neither they nor their husbands can attain the love described by St. Paul without God’s help and daily discipline.     Love begins at home, to be sure, and so make quite sure you meet the daily obligations of domestic love—patience with your spouse and children, kindness toward an annoying relative, small acts of thoughtfulness to siblings and grandparents. But we need friends as well, and generally one has only two or three very close friends in a lifetime. In addition to two or three close friends, we need a supportive community of people who believe what we believe and desire what we desire. “If you don’t have the support of a small community of believers, you will lose your faith.” Dreher, The Benedict Option Christian friendship is an obligation, a matter of spiritual life and death. We are made in God’s image, who is himself a community of persons. Christ formed a community of twelve friends while on earth. You too must form authentic friendships with other Maronite Catholics if you are to be happy and do God’s work. Pray together, work together, sup together, vacation together. Make the effort to build convivium, the Latin word that best describes the Last Supper. Some lonely people pass through these church doors, and it need not be so. 
   Ask God to give you friends, and then risk forming deep friendships, and God will give you true love.