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This article looks at the particular way in which Lebanese women, who originally come from Antiochian Orthodox and Maronite Churches and by marriage join the Protestant Church, construct and experience their Easter celebration. Starting with the bodily experience of the feast, it analyses how each liturgical context orients and temporally locates the women. It explains how the engagement of the body relates to the material experience of presence. Constantly moving between the different celebrations the women considered create a personal symbolic network where their perception of Christ's presence and absence is challenged. The article suggests that in this weaving of the feasting experiences the women perform their liturgical and sacramental theology; a theology of negotiation mirrored in the resurrection narrative of Maty at the tomb.

This article describes what the International Ecumenical Youth Meeting in Beirut 2019 meant for participants from the Middle East, particularly from Lebanon and how these meanings can be theologically evaluated. Embracing, a term we borrow from Miroslav Volf’s theory, became a crucial concept to describe one of the main meanings. This is further elaborated with the concept symbolic embracement. Furthermore we explain how exploration and commitment play a role in the participation of youth. The theological evaluation leads us to the God who transcends human particularity and plurality.

Marian images are powerful and active in the lives of many faithful Christians. This research looks at the role of Mary in the lives of a particular kind of Christians who have a complex liturgical make up: Lebanese women who come from Orthodox and Maronite backgrounds and who by marriage join Lebanese Protestant churches. While one would suppose that Protestantism and Marian devotion should exclude each other, we show that in this case a creative ambiguity is at work where images of Mary help qualify the relationship with the divine.