# A Lebanese contemporary female mystic and her counter-conducts

Emma Aubin-Boltanski

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## To cite this version:

Emma Aubin-Boltanski. A Lebanese contemporary female mystic and her counter-conducts. Women's History Review, 2019, 29 (1), pp.74-89. 10.1080/09612025.2019.1595205. hal-05186561

HAL Id: hal-05186561

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Submitted on 25 Jul 2025

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# A Lebanese Contemporary Female Mystic and her Counter-Conducts

Emma Aubin-Boltanski

## Abstract

A network of Christian female mystics in Lebanon and Syria has been forming since the early 1980s. Composed of Christian women from large cities, such as Beirut or Damascus, it is characterized by its denominational and social diversity. Some of these women – whether Maronite, Armenian, or Greek Catholic – come from poor families living in impoverished suburbs, while others are members of the upper-middle class. They belong to a common "global Marian" network, in which the Internet plays a crucial role, especially for the circulation of images, messages, visions, and prayers.

This article will focus on one of these female mystics: Catherine Fahmi, who has been living, and officiating, in her apartment in the suburbs of Beirut since the late 1990s. Catherine is a Maronite native of Keserwan, a district in the Mount Lebanon Governorate. She is a married mother of three, in her forties. Each Tuesday morning, she experiences a public ecstasy (inkhitâf). Every year, on Good Friday, surrounded by a number of faithful followers, she sees and experiences the Way of the Cross. My aim here is to grasp the complex interplay between this female mystic, her followers and the Maronite Church. Her activities, and the rituals surrounding her stigmatized body, will be analyzed in terms of "counter-conducts," a notion developed by Michel Foucault.

A network of Christian female mystics in Lebanon and Syria has been forming since the early 1980s. Composed of Christian women from large cities, such as Beirut or Damascus, it is characterized by its denominational and social diversity. Some of these women – whether Maronite, Armenian, or Greek Catholic – come from poor families living in impoverished suburbs, while others are members of the upper-middle class. They belong to a common "global Marian" network, in which the Internet plays a crucial role, especially for the circulation of images, messages, visions, and prayers. As part of a long history of stigmatized Catholic mystics, they follow a model inaugurated by St Francis of Assisi (12th – 13th centuries), then later tested by Catherine de Sienna (14th century), and locally reiterated by Hindiyya al-‘Ujaimi (18th century)¹ and above all by Rafqa², the great nineteenth-century Maronite saint who was
canonized in 2001. The pattern they reproduce is remarkably stable: as their predecessors did before them, their suffering bodies play a key role. They describe themselves as mere "instruments" of God's will and word; they are accompanied by clerics and secretaries; and they are venerated. However, there are also some differences, most notable of which is that these contemporary mystics make their charisms public without taking holy orders. Most of them have chosen to marry, to have children, and to live in tune with their societies as well as their political, social, and economic turmoil. It is therefore in the world, most often in their very living rooms, that they build their holy careers. They share features with the "stigmatic mothers" promoted by the Catholic Church in the 20th Century, even though they never explicitly refer to them as their models³.

In 2008, I started a seven-year fieldwork on this issue. I chose to closely follow one of these mystics: Catherine Fahmi who has been living and officiating in her apartment in Nabaa (in the suburbs of Beirut) since the late 1990s. She is a Maronite native of Keserwan, a district in the Mount Lebanon Governorate. She is a married mother of three, in her forties. Each Tuesday morning, she experiences a public ecstasy (inkhitâf). Every year, on Good Friday, surrounded by a number of faithful followers, she sees and experiences the Way of the Cross. The aim of this article will be to grasp the complex interplay between this female mystic and the Maronite Church. Her activities, and the rituals surrounding her stigmatized body, will be analyzed in terms of "counter-conducts," a notion developed by Michel Foucault.

Indeed, Catherine's actions can be likened to forms of resistance that neither the word "revolt," being too precise and too strong, nor "religious dissidence," which refers to a political refusal conceived of as such by the actors, capture. Since these forms of resistance are more diffuse, subdued, and tenuous, the Foucauldian notion of "counter-conducts⁴" is more useful for analyzing them and grasping what takes place through them. Catherine being neither a revolutionary nor a dissident, the use of the word "counter-conduct" has the additional advantage of avoiding any improper substantification.

The concept of "counter-conduct" refers to what Foucault also calls "revolts of conduct": individual or collective gestures and behaviors that define other ways of "conducting" ("de conduire"), "let[ting] oneself be conducted" ("d'être conduit"), and "conduct[ing] oneself ("de se conduire")⁵. This concept helps look into the practices that don't expressly fall within the political register and that have an ambiguous relation to power and obedience insofar as they border on resistance and insubordination. It allows us to focus on, and analyze, a wide range of modes of action and behavior, which, though not explicitly prohibited, explore the
possibility of being and behaving differently in a given society and with regard to its norms.
However, social scientists have only recently started employing this concept⁶.

Five forms of counter-conduct are identified by Foucault: asceticism, the building of a community, mysticism, the return to Scripture, and eschatological belief. Not only do they challenge the binary structure of the Catholic Church, distinguishing the clergy from the laity, but they also "tend to redistribute, reverse, nullify, and partially or totally discredit pastoral power in the systems of salvation, obedience, and truth, that is to say, in the three domains (...) which characterize (...) the domain of intervention of pastoral power"⁷. In one form or another, we can find these forms of counter-conduct in Catherine's case.

## *Indeterminacy as asceticism*

Catherine's house, April 14th, 2011. "Welcome!" Catherine exclaims as she sees me walk through the front door of her apartment located in Nabaa, a poor informal neighborhood in the suburbs of Beirut. Barefoot, wearing gray sweatpants rolled up to the knees, she is mopping the hallway. Her hair is tied back. Today, she is smiley, almost cheerful. But two days earlier, on a Tuesday, the day of ecstasy, I had left a despondent woman, with dark rings under her eyes, a haggard look, and her hair hanging on her face. In the living room, filled with holy images, five women are praying in front of the altar, telling their beads. Meanwhile, Catherine is engrossed in her household tasks. "Would you like some coffee?" she asks me. A young girl breaks away from the prayer group to join us. She is elegant, wearing skinny jeans with high heels and carrying a Louis Vuitton handbag. Everything about her looks indicates that she isn't from Nabaa. She nervously asks, "Where is the lady of the house? Where is Catherine?" "It's me!" Catherine replies, wringing her mop out. The visitor's staggered look seems to amuse her. "I know. It's always like that: people can't believe it when they come for the first time, but it's me indeed!" During my numerous subsequent visits, I witnessed similar scenes. Catherine's appearance and gestures don't match what is expected from a "woman who sees the Virgin".

Admittedly, Catherine is known for having visions, being behind miracle healings, and for delivering prophetic messages during ecstasies. Yet she keeps pointing out that she is an "ordinary" woman, a married mother of three. She doesn't "negate" her gender (by scarifying her motherhood and femininity) and regularly claims that she is "nothing more than an ordinary
woman: a mother who worries about her son who comes home with tattoos, who worries about her daughter and the bad company she has been keeping..." Indeed, what fascinated me during my fieldwork in her house was her ability to combine on a daily basis two opposite ways of living: that of an ordinary woman and that of an extraordinary one building up a holy career. On the one hand, the divine was always likely to pop up in her everyday routine, for instance, while preparing lunch for her family. On the other hand, her ordinariness was also constantly exhibited and stressed even during rituals. This entanglement between extraordinary and ordinary, profane and sacred goes with the *indeterminacy* of both her experience and her role. A woman at once ordinary and extraordinary, she avades any attempt at being categorized. Is she a "saint," a "seer," a "visionary," a "miracle maker," or a "prophetess"? None of these terms are used to describe her. They would indeed set too firmly her position within the religious field. On the other hand, circumlocutions such as the "woman who sees the Virgin" or the "woman who is visited by the Virgin" are used. The event and the action (seeing and being visited) are at the heart of this character's definition – an open definition still in the making, which reveals that Catherine's "holiness" isn't acknowledged once and for all, but is still part of an ongoing and unfinished "authentication process". In a nutshell, while displaying an absolute mastery over her body, which is characteristic of asceticism, an "exercise of self on self" dedicated to vanquishing matter, the devil and its temptations, Catherine builds her own holy nature in an endless oscillation between "ordinary" and "extraordinary". She blurs the lines between the sacred and the profane. In doing so, she makes it impossible to define or classify her, and therefore to control her. Asceticism, Foucault explains, is "a sort of close combat between the individual and himself in which the authority, presence, and gaze of someone else is, if not impossible, at least unnecessary"⁸. Catherine indeed shows this "specific excess that denies access to an external power" ⁹, in particular to a clerical one. This "excess" makes it seem like she is constantly "going beyond" the scope of the definitions and qualifications that might be attached to her.

*The Return to Scripture or the Renewed Annunciation*

Nabaa, April 16th, 2013. Two weeks have passed since Good Friday. In the living room/sanctuary, five women are comfortably seated on the couch. One of them, Pascale, asks me to sit next to her and tells me that she is going to read again the message
delivered by the "Virgin" on the day of the "crucifixion". She nervously turns the pages of a thick spiral notebook, whispering, "March 12th, no. March 14th, no. March 18th, no... Oh that's it! Friday, March 29th, 2013. Ladies, listen up!" she finally exclaims to silence her companions:

1. "My dear children, may the Holy Trinity be with you!

2. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen".

Hearing these words, the faithful cross themselves and bow devoutly.

3. "My dear children, despite my suffering, my wounded heart, and my Son's, I am happy that you've come to be with me, my Son, and the Saints.

4. (...)

5. Heaven has allowed me to be with you and to speak with each one of you. My children, listen very carefully to heaven's word and spread it to your families and friends.

6. I tell you, 'Don't be afraid of the Annunciation (al-bishâra); the Annunciation is yours...'"

"But what does it mean?" a woman asks. "Well, it means that the Virgin told us, 'I gave you the Annunciation and you must spread it to others', Pascale replies before resuming her reading:

7. "For you are happy to speak of grace.

8. My children, from now on, pray for a united Church (kanîsa wâhida), for united feasts (a'yâd wâhida), for a united cry (sarkha wâhida), for a united death and resurrection (mawt wa qiyâma wâhida).

9. Pray, my children. Pray, my children, that these hearts are pure, that these hearts form a united heart (qalb wâhid), and that the word is united (kalima wâhida).

10. All those who rejoice in the division of the Church don't know true joy.

11. All those who lament the division of the Church yearn to see it unite.

12. As long as the Church was small, it was happy.

13. As it grew larger, the suffering began.

14. My children, unite your voice to the wound of my Son, who bleeds for the sins and for my children who got away from my heart and my Son's."
Each Tuesday morning, after recitations of the Rosary, songs of praise, litanies, and invocations intoned by a crowd of faithful, Catherine experiences an ecstasy: "caught up" (tunkhatif), she travels (tusâfir) to the Other World. Her corporeal envelope, temporarily left behind, channels a "presence" (hudûr, wujûd) of the Virgin or of Saint Charbel, the great Maronite saint canonized in 1977. Through Catherine, both deliver messages (rasâ'il), which are then written down by a secretary. These messages refer to the Gospel. They constitute a way of returning to Scripture, making it "speak for itself," enacting it, performing it, without referring back to clerical authority. During these sessions, the Mother of God can be "recognized" by her gentle "features," her quavering high-pitched voice, and her formal speech. Meanwhile, the saint of the mountain can be identified by the sound of his stick hitting the ground, his stern look, his hoarse voice, and his Lebanese accent. Once the trance is over, Catherine regains consciousness and control over her body. Her words and gestures are recounted to her. She in turn relates her journey and visions (ru'yât). This complex device is noteworthy in that Catherine, decidedly unclassifiable, is at once "passive" and "active," since she simultaneously experiences an unconscious possession and a conscious journey¹⁰.

During these ecstasies, Saint Charbel invariably manifests himself as the monk from the Lebanese mountain, strict and tough. On the other hand, the Virgin presents herself more ambivalently: sometimes as a spokesperson for humankind in front of her Son tempted to abandon it and sometimes as a spokesperson for her Son weary of humankind. She commiserates at once with the two protagonists of redemption: both her Son and humankind¹¹. As a result, "she" inconsistently alternates words of affection and reproaches; pieces of advice and warnings in messages where "I" and "we" intertwine with "you". Moreover, a cognitive disorder is constantly at work with regards to the identity of the presence manifesting through a soft and maternal voice. Who is speaking? Is it the Virgin or Catherine? To account for this indeterminacy, I will refer to this entity as "the Virgin/Catherine" or "she"¹².

The structure of interlocution then implemented can be described as a "structure made up of relays"¹³. In the chain of messages, relays indeed play a "dual role"¹⁴, being a sender here and a receiver there: Catherine of course, but also the secretary Therese, the priests, and finally the faithful. None of them only passively receives the statement: all, in one way or another, enact it and perform it before transmitting it in turns. As a result, the messages delivered by Catherine can be regarded as malleable prophecies, versatile and interpretable at will. Interlaced
with words, spontaneous and sometimes incomprehensible expressions, biblical images, and gestures, they require their recipients to carry out a continuous interpretive "work".

To better understand how this particular structure of interlocution operates, let us consider one of its relays: the secretary. A forty-something divorcee in 2011, Therese was raising her then fifteen-year-old son all by herself. This is a difficult family situation in Lebanon, especially for a very pious Maronite woman, since the Maronite Catholic Church still disapproves of divorce. She recounts how Catherine and her family helped her overcome her serious depression. Since then, she has been dividing her time between her work in an association of women graduates and her daily "mission" consisting in keeping the registers of the Beirut mystic's messages and visions. She always attends the ecstasies, sitting or kneeling next to the Virgin/Catherine, with her big spiral notebook and her pen. Attentive to the slightest movements, she writes the "divine" messages down and transcribes all of the mystic's facial expressions and postures as accurately as possible. The messages - made up of words, prayers, passages of the Gospels, and enigmatic phrases - are then divided into two distinct categories, "general" and "private"¹⁵, before being copied into different registers. Likewise, the transcribed visions are copied into a third notebook. The differences between the spoken statements and the copied messages are noticeable: language mistakes are deleted and awkward wording is corrected. When in doubt, Therese asks Catherine or a priest for clarification. The message is therefore, initially, a medley of equivocal words and images, which allow for a wide range of individual and collective interpretations on the part of the faithful, the secretary, and the priests. However, in the following days, a process of materialization takes place, temporarily setting the meaning of the message. The text may be "reviewed" during a new reading, which leads to a "refreshed interpretation," hence the temporary nature of this stabilization. This incomplete process combining an intense work of language polishing, rationalization, and justification is determined by the political and social situation of the moment. Thus, since March 2011, the themes conveyed are often linked to the events in Syria and to the fears that the civil war could resume in Lebanon. Above all, the process operates in relation to a premise constituted, on the one hand, by the Gospels, and on the other hand, by the various statements that have been circulating for several decades within the network of mystics in Beirut and Damascus.

In the divine missive transmitted by Catherine, the appeal for unity is most often associated with a mention of the Annunciation. As we know, the Angelic Salutation is absolutely central for every Christian: it is the moment marking the Incarnation as well as an episode that recapitulates the Creation. It isn't surprising that the Beirut mystic reiterates it in
her own way: like many others before her, she is looking "for ‘annunciations’, for words that take on body, for childbirth by the ear," as Michel de Certeau intelligently puts it¹⁶.

In the messages Catherine delivers, the Annunciation is neither told word for word nor literally reproduced without alteration. Through her suspicious body ("weak by nature, sinner by inheritance" as the Old Testament phrases it¹⁷), and moreover in a house located in Nabaa, a wretched neighborhood known for all kinds of trafficking (prostitution, drugs and arms dealing), the holy text is enacted to indicate the possibility of a new beginning, a new conversion. "Don't be afraid of the Annunciation; the Annunciation is yours..." As we saw earlier, this wording, enigmatic to say the least, raises questions. Pascale takes it upon herself to interpret it as a "mission": the Annunciation must be "brought to others," she explains. Again, this isn't a simple reminder of the stories of the Gospels, but a call to action for the faithful to spread the eschatological announcement of a regeneration of *what is*: a "reality" marked by division. The "division" here criticized refers to several divides: that which splits into several established Churches the ideal Ecclesia, a united body encompassing all Christians; and that which, in the Lebanese context, violently pits families and political parties against one another within Christian communities.

## An Alternative Ecclesia based on an Eschatology of Unity

Eschatological beliefs, this "other way of disqualifying the pastor's role," according to Foucault is at the heart of the mission Catherine intends to accomplish¹⁸. At regular intervals, she urges the faithful to prepare for the coming return of Christ by uniting. To achieve this, a community of prayer that overturns hierarchy has gradually formed in her living room and around her: a community constructed around herself and her stigmatic body that tends "to suppress the priests-laity dimorphism (...) typical of the organization of the Christian pastorate"¹⁹.

In her self-narrative, Catherine tirelessly says that her "intercessor" (*chafi*'), Saint Charbel, and the Virgin regularly appear to her and have delivered messages through her since an early age. For a long time, she has kept this intimate relation with the saints secret. She went public in 1990, after she married and moved to the Lebanese capital. It should be stressed that the year 1990 was both a turning point in her personal life as well as in the history of the Lebanese civil war. It marked the complete defeat of the main Christian factions after a bloody
inter-Christian war -remembered as the "elimination war" (*harb al-ilghâ’*), between the Lebanese army (led by Michel Aoun) and the Lebanese Forces (led by Samir Geagea). Eight years later, at Saint Charbel’s "request," Catherine opened up her house. Since then, her apartment has become a kind of "house/church," a highly social hybrid space – half public, half private, and half sacred, half profane, centered on her ordinary and extraordinary body. At any time of the day, men and women from different denominations come to see Catherine, to attend her ecstasies, to read a revelation in the message register, to pray, or simply to socialize.

The Maronite Church appointed a spiritual guide for Catherine. His official mission is to keep an eye on her and to report her activities to the religious hierarchy, but he is never seen in Catherine's house. The Church has also launched an official enquiry, but nine years later no official conclusion has been issued. This in-between and unclear attitude of the religious institution towards apparitions and visionary experiences is common. It is worth underlining that the Syriac Maronite Church of Antioch is an Eastern Catholic Church in full communion with the Holy See of Rome. Its official stance on miracles and apparitions, like that of the Catholic Church, is characterized by ambivalence and contradiction²⁰ that are symptomatic of an embarrassment about phenomena that take place outside the institutional framework and that most often concern women and non-consecrated images. Moreover, as an experience, the mystic is always "excessive" for the Church. The latter is wary of her when she is too abstract – seeking to outdo Christ's humanness – or on the contrary too incarnated – since stigmata, bleeding, and body writings are indicative of an excess of figuration according to the Church²¹. The extravagant and extraordinary nature of the signs is dismissed, even condemned for corresponding to a singularity that cannot be part of the traditional social institutions²². Mystics are suspected of betraying and endangering the group in the name of their inwardness, this different and singular locus of their experience, from where they nevertheless claim to bear testament to the same God as that of the Church²³. In the name of her inner and singular experience, Catherine, like many other female saints before her, invites her faithful to create an alternative Ecclesia around her, transcending the divisions between the eleven established Churches in Lebanon. The theme of "unity," in contrast to the counter-theme of "division," becomes a leitmotif in the messages the mystic delivers during her ecstasies. Far from being new or original, it is a *topos* of Catholic mysticism. Yet invoking it can be considered a form of counter-conduct within the Middle-Eastern Christian communities.

This requires clarification: In Lebanon, Christians make up about 36% of the population. While they may experience a "sense of group belonging" in certain circumstances,
the situation is in fact much more complicated. Indeed, far from forming a single homogeneous
community, they are divided into six Catholic Churches, four Orthodox Churches, and a
federation of Churches and communities stemming from the Reformation. Eleven Christian
communities are officially recognized in Lebanon: the Greek Orthodox, the Melkites, the
Chaldeans, the Jacobites, the Armenian Apostolics, the Armenian Catholics, the Armenian
Protestants, the Assyrians, the Maronites, the Protestants, and the Roman Catholics. These rival
institutions were founded on theological debates as well as ethnic and political divisions, which
have been intensified since the sixteenth century by Catholic, and later Protestant,
missionaries²⁴.

The pluralism of Eastern Christianity is sometimes celebrated as a "diversity" and a
"centuries-old cultural heritage" intrinsic to Lebanon's identity. However, it should be noted
that those concerned often experience it as a "division" or a "weakness" that only reinforces the
minoritization process of Christians. The most religious among them even view it as a betrayal
of the Church defined as the mystical body of Christ²⁵. Going against the established divisions,
Catherine gathers around her, thanks to her charism, faithful followers from different
denominations – Maronites, Greek Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Armenians… – in addition to
Muslims. As soothing it may appear, this appeal for unity beyond denominational borders, the
eschatology of unity, which is central in the "divine messages" delivered by Catherine, is in fact
highly critical of the official Churches and their divisions. This bears a striking resemblance to
the configuration described by Michel de Certeau in his study on the seventeenth-century
history of religion: institutional bodies (Catholic, Protestant, Jansenist, Jesuit...) structured by
rules and separated by boundaries, faced with spiritual guides and mystics who, though
Catholic, Protestant, Jansenist, or Jesuit, share very similar personal experiences and undermine
the established divisions. Madame Guyon (1648-1717) epitomized this mystical position.
Despite the persecution she suffered by the Church, she spent her entire life championing the
idea that faith should go beyond dividing lines between religions. She spent the last days of her
life surrounded by both Protestant and Catholic followers²⁶.

*Conducting and Letting Oneself be Conducted: Catherine and the Priests*
**Catherine's house, Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012, 8:45 am.** As I enter the living room/sanctuary, many faithful followers are already there. At nine, the long series of *Hail Marys, Our Fathers*, and *Glory Bes* begins. At the end of the fourth mystery, Father Maroun arrives with *khûriyya*²⁷ Rita, his wife. The women dutifully step aside to make way for the couple. "Go ahead, keep praying," the priest repeats while he forces his way to the altar. He grabs the microphone handed to him, places a protective hand on Catherine's shoulder as she is kneeling, and turns to the assembly, attentively scanning it for several minutes. Therese, Catherine's secretary, slightly startles him as she pulls him by the sleeve. He leans forward for a moment to hear what she has to say, stands up straight, and announces in the microphone, "Oh, my brothers, the ecstasy has just begun. Let's keep quiet!" He then kneels down. His right hand is lying flat on the head of the mystic, who is rocking back and forth. The "Virgin's" usual "My dearest children" heralds her presence. The message is then delivered. Today it is uncharacteristically sprinkled with private announcements. "She" successively summons several people: Roy, Rebecca, and Father Elie²⁸. The latter has likely just arrived because he is still in the hallway when he is called. He slowly comes forward. He seems extremely tense, almost hostile. "Move over! Keep quiet!" he whispers in exasperation as he fiddles with his phone, probably to put it on record mode. He kneels down next to the "Virgin/Catherine," after carefully moving the microphone away so that "his" message can't be heard by the entire assembly. The muttering lasts nearly ten minutes. The priest seems to gradually relax. He ends up laughing and shedding a few emotional tears. Then the "Virgin" announces her departure: "I'm leaving, but I'd like to say one last thing: go to Mass, take your children to Mass, and confess. My Son is waiting for you in his house".

Despite the wait-and-see and suspicious, even hostile, stance of the Maronite Church, priests, monks, and nuns visit Catherine's house, in a personal capacity, without referring back to their hierarchy. To justify their commitment to the mystic and their transgression of the policy of their hierarchy, they invoke a higher order emanating from the saints who supposedly have guided them towards the mystic. Through them, Catherine maintains flexible and informal links with the institution. Some of them are particularly active in her living room, especially on Tuesday mornings, the days of the weekly ecstasy. Their actions, postures, and attitudes in Catherine's house – a quasi-sanctuary – point out that the Maronite Church, an Eastern Church
strongly attached to its history, tradition, and specificity in relation to Catholicism, is permeated
with several trends: liberal, traditional, and charismatic. Priests from these various trends come
to her house, and in this very special space, in their own way they also engage in certain forms
of counter-conducts, which place them in an ambiguous and unstable position, being at once
"pastors" (holders of authority) and "faithful" (conducted by the mystic). Among them are
Maroun and Elie, two married priests²⁹. Each Tuesday morning, the faithful start gathering in
the mystic's living room at eight. Standing in front of the domestic altar set up in a corner of
the room, they recite the mysteries of the Rosary, surrounding Catherine in a semi-circle.
Meanwhile, the priests are invariably late. Nevertheless, they demand that a place be saved for
them near the altar. Once they arrive, some, like Father Elie, ostensibly remain in the
background, whereas others, like Father Maroun, emphatically remind the assembly of their
authority, speaking in a loud voice and placing a "protective" and "domineering" hand on
Catherine's shoulder or head during the whole ecstasy.

Tall and elegant, with a tanned complexion and a broad, friendly face, Father Maroun
inspires respect. His presence never goes unnoticed: he speaks and laughs loudly, with
sweeping gestures, and is quite demonstrative. He is always followed close behind by Rita, his
immaculately dressed and coiffed wife, who sports an unflappable smile and gladly sings in her
beautiful voice songs of praise. Living in a village in Ehden³⁰, where Father Maroun is in charge
of three small parishes, the couple "comes down" to Beirut each Tuesday to attend Catherine's
ecstasy. Both claim to be absolutely convinced of the mystic's charisms. Father Maroun, in
particular, explains that "normally" he should "seek permission from the bishop of the Ehden
region or the bishop of Antelias³¹ to visit Catherine". But he adds that he never does, "because
Saint Charbel is his true and only guide" who has led him to "Catherine's grace" (ni'mat
Catherine) and that he isn't accountable to anyone. Father Maroun acts as an unfailing defender
and protector. After Tuesday ecstasies, he always takes the microphone and, in a husky voice
with a strong mountain accent, launches into lengthy exhortations. He then mentions the
abundant "evidence" – stories of miracles, healing, and conversion – attesting to the "reality of
Catherine's grace".

Meanwhile, Father Elie is in charge of the parish of Zouk Mikael, a small town located
fourteen kilometers from Beirut, in Keserwan District. Very different from Father Maroun, he
is short, round-shouldered, with a pale complexion, and wide, anxious, slightly watery eyes.
His long, nervous hands constantly fiddle with an old Nokia phone. He speaks in a hushed
voice. He always appears surreptitiously, makes sure to be as little visible as possible, and
constantly gives the impression that he is about to leave. He sports a mistrustful, almost hostile pout. "Father Elie, with me, he comes and goes, he comes and goes... It's been going on for eleven years", Catherine sums up laconically, with a swinging hand gesture. She seems unfazed by this situation, for she knows that the hesitation and confusion he keeps showing are part of his essential duty of "discernment". He must indeed differentiate between Good and Evil and constantly use his judgement, an uninterrupted work that comes with the "common fear"^32" of being mistaken and led astray. By sticking to this continuous attitude of discernment that, as we know, is part of Saint Paul's list of charisms, he emerges as a crucial actor of Catherine's grace, in a back and forth movement, between his role of control and authorization and Catherine's contrasting position as a mere disciple.

Through their relationship with the mystic, Father Maroun and Father Elie build their own holy gest. Each in his own way, they both reveal the current influence of the Charismatic Renewal movement on the Maronite Church. Father Elie in particular regularly performs the laying on of hands and exorcisms in Catherine's living room, rituals very popular with Catholic charismatics. The way they seize the messages uttered by Catherine is also significant. Most of the divine messages the mystic delivers during her ecstasies come down to recommendations meant above all to recall the urgent need to unify the Christians, and to reaffirm the central role of the Church and the importance of the sacraments. At the same time, they emphasize a "personal" and "ethical" religiosity, while constantly referring to the Holy Spirit, Satan, and the Virgin, which is characteristic of the appeal of the Spiritual Awakening ideology. After each ecstasy, a priest, usually Father Maroun, makes a speech that, in its tone and in the topics addressed, strongly resembles a homily. However, he doesn't comment on passages of the Gospel, but on the message of the day, thus making a striking parallel between Scripture and the words uttered by the mystic, helping to authenticate and sanctify them.

## *The mystic's Body Language*

By making public her special relationship with God, Catherine has in a way become a "mystical phenomenon". "Mystical" means "hidden" in Greek. The phrase "mystical phenomenon" thus brings two opposite ideas together: a "phenomenon" is what appears, something visible, whereas what remains secret, something invisible, is "mystical"^33. Catherine as a "mystical phenomenon" is necessarily inclined to use a body language. She has indeed
developed a bodily vocabulary that partly reveals her inner experience. The enigmatic messages she delivers and the stigmata appearing on her flesh are all signs meant to be read and interpreted by an exterior entity, namely the society she lives in.

Catherine is fully mystical in that she claims to have a "body-to-body" experience with the Virgin and Christ. Her body is the locus of a mediation between the divine and the worldly. This fundamentally short-circuits the transmission of the truths of teaching, which, in Christianity, from God to the individual and from the individual to God, must be mediated or controlled by the pastoral power³⁴. In her "body-to-body" interplay with the saints, religious images (icons, statues) play a crucial role.

Like an icon, Catherine's body is constantly explored, it is scrutinized by the faithful in search of signs. The rituals that take place in her "church house" are based on an "experimental knowledge³⁵" built on a dialectic between body and images – that is, more specifically, between, on the one hand, the mystic, who "embodies" images (fait images) and, on the other hand, images, which conversely, "become embodied" (font corps), by exuding viscous liquid similar to bodily humor. A series of tests durably link these two components of the dialectic. The one attests and doubles – both on the sense of duplicates and increases – what happens in and within the other. Thus "an external proof" of the reality of the phenomenon is established. The latter, also referred to as "thing" (*sha'y*) or "grace" (*ni'ma*), is characterized by its evanescence and instability. It must therefore constantly be tested³⁶.

Around Easter, as part of her stigmata, whitish swellings regularly appear on her chest. The visitors who look at these blisters for the first time only see an amorphous nettle rash. However, when guided by an informed faithful follower or priest, they end up making out what the group expects them to see. The symptom then turns into a sign: a shape and a name; a cross and the word "Lebanon". The flesh carries the message, which isn't an objective given. Elsewhere, it would be invisible or, at best, could only be glimpsed. In this context, the participants' "seeing experience" makes it obvious. Indeed, this "seeing" is based on a doloristic imagery of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows' pierced heart, as well as by a richly illustrated history of women – mystics, sometimes recognized saints – with engraved chests. In the Near East, some of these representations and the devotions associated with them have been spread by the Jesuits since the first half of the eighteenth century³⁷. The example of the Visitation Sisters was especially promoted. They engraved the word "Jesus" or the shape of the cross on their bodies by various means: with red-hot irons, knife blades, or boiling wax. The most famous of them is none other than Marguerite-Marie Alacoque (1647-1690)³⁸, who fostered the
devotion to Christ in the form of his heart of flesh or "Sacred Heart". However, these marks
could be seen and were venerated by the community only after the nuns' deaths.

The *topos* of the engraved chest can also be found in the case of Catherine of Nabaa,
though with two significant discrepancies. First, the mystic reveals the blisters appearing on her
chest in her lifetime and *in situ*. She doesn't trace the letters on her skin; the "seeing" crowd
around her does. Second, the word "Lebanon" can be read in place of "Jesus". The symbol of
the cross is there indeed, but it indicates the presence of a Lebanon "suffering like Christ".

This discrepancy tells a lot about the shared anxiety of the faithful surrounding
Catherine. It tells also a lot about their hope that Lebanon, as an "embodied space" (espace
corporisé³⁹), like Jesus, could be renewed and could play a role in world salvation. Through the
writings engraved on her chest, the Virgin/Catherine suggests renewing an "us": a collective,
Lebanon, this political entity that has never crystallized, that has remained since its foundation
a "principle of uncertainty"⁴⁰, a form of utopia without real location. "Pity the nation divided
into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation!⁴¹" In this verse, probably written in the
early 1930s, barely ten years after the creation of Lebanon, the famous Lebanese poet Khalil
Gibran revealed the tensions inherent in his country, whose definition and identity its various
communities have never agreed on. Half a century later, while the civil war was raging, Ahmad
Beydoun again deplored this "fragmentation" and called for the formation of a "total body": a
Lebanon that would integrate "into its 'heart', 'chest', and 'shoulders'" each of its components –
communities, villages, and families⁴².

In Lebanon, the homeland plays a central part in Marian apparitions, which portray it as
the "second Son," "suffering" and "fragmented" like Christ. This occurred in 1983, with the
"Virgin of blood" of Rmeich⁴³. However, this phenomenon is by no means peculiar to Lebanon.
A similar eschatological scene has been observed elsewhere, notably in Egypt and Spain. In
Zeitoun a neighborhood of the suburb of Cairo, the Virgin Mary appeared to thousands of Copts
and Muslims in 1968 right after the defeat of the Six-Day war. No message was delivered, but
in a time of defeat and collective depression, a political interpretation was given to the
apparition: "She" was urging the Egyptian people to unite against Israel⁴⁴. Yet, the mystical
phenomenon observed in Catherine's house has more to do with the "moving crucifix" visions
which occurred in Spain just after the First World War. This is because the latter gives a central
role to the figure of the suffering body of Christ which was completely obscured in Zeitun. In
March 1919, in a church in Limpias, a statue of Christ in agony "came to life" before a crowd
of praying faithful followers. In his study of the case⁴⁵, William Christian shows that, among other interpretations, the main one was that a "missionary Christ⁴⁶" manifested itself throughout Spain in the 1920s "to express his glory and his love" and "to save the nation from impiety"⁴⁷. At the time, observers even interpreted the image's movements as the forewarning sign of both the end of times and the Second Coming of Christ. In Limpias, Jesus seemed to predominate in the scene. Actually, the Virgin was also present in the background. The events were indeed soon interpreted in the light of the apparitions of Lourdes (1858). The prevailing explanatory scheme at the time was that, in Lourdes, the Virgin had forecast the Second Coming of Christ, while, in Limpias, the prophecy was starting to be fulfilled: the "social reign of Christ was beginning"⁴⁸. After the time of Mary came that of Christ⁴⁹. The Virgin was indeed again the initiator of the Renewal. Soon, Limpias became an international pilgrimage center: groups of faithful followers flocked from all over Catholic Europe. The interpretation of Christ's movement varied according to national affiliations. One of them was developed by Hungarian monarchists in the interwar period. They saw Christ's movement as a metaphor for the "dismemberment of their nation by the Allied Powers in the Treaty of Trianon" (June 4, 1920). Christ in agony came to symbolize a defeated and dismantled Hungary. For the proponents of this interpretation, the image "evoked the fate of the Hungarian nation in perpetual ascent of Golgotha and reminded the Hungarians that they would only find peace at the foot of the Cross"⁵⁰. Until the outbreak of the Second World War, postcards were widely circulated, which represented a map of Hungary, on top of which featured a crown of thorns crucified on a cross formed by the "T" of Trianon⁵¹. "Identifying the national territory with Christ's body meant that they had faith in a future and an inevitable salvation.⁵²" In 1938, hungarian-speaking territories of Czechoslovakia were annexed by Hungary. For the national press, this annexation was the first step towards a "foretold resurrection"⁵³. At the same time, a shift from the figure of Christ on the Cross to that of the Virgin occurred: "From 1940 on, the Marian sanctuary of Csiksomlyo became the center of a new religious and national attention; it became the symbol of a new-found integrity and territorial unity after the partial reunification, a symbol diametrically opposed to Christ's suffering and dying body"⁵⁴.

The Limpias apparitions highlight, by contrast, the characteristics of the eschatological interpretation developed around the entity of "Lebanon" that Catherine embodies. In the land of the Cedar, as in Spain and Hungary, the Marian and/or Christic apparitions gave rise to mixed feelings – hope as well as fear – characteristic of the apocalyptic rhetoric⁵⁵. They lead to nationalist interpretations very similar to the one Hungarian nationalists developed after the
defeat and division of their country. However, in Catherine's case, there is no clear "division of labor between the various heavenly figures," as that described by William Christian and Zoltan Krasznai: the Virgin warns, protects, and intercedes; Christ punishes and offers redemption⁵⁶. The scene is completely dominated by a Mother "of Sorrows". Yet this Mother is also a model of possible reversibility. By merging with the Son, she also conveys a message of renewal: the "birth" of a future, a "second Son," a new Lebanon. Christ in turn is merely a metaphor, an "image of," which refers to "something else"⁵⁷," namely the nation seen as a paradoxical body: certainly defeated, but also carrying a messianic hope of renewal.

## Conclusion: the Heaven and Nation in the Flesh

Christianity's eminently ambiguous relation to the body, and especially to the flesh, is well known. As Joseph Moingt points out, "the exact definition of incarnation is that 'the Word became flesh'; it was not simply made of flesh or embodied: it took on a body of flesh, an earthly, material body, 'born' to a woman"⁵⁸ [my translation]. The idea that God is a being of flesh – "flesh" referring to a sentient body, of lowly origin, and consequently doomed to destruction – has sparked off fierce debate among the different Christian groups as well as between the latter and their opponents, in particular their Greek opponents, since ancient times. Meanwhile, Christianity establishes the concept of the "crucified God," who suffers and dies on the cross, before being resurrected and ascending to heaven. The mourning of the first body, Christ's body, holds a central position: the uninterrupted work consisting in bringing it back⁵⁹ is based on this nostalgia for incarnation. The unfulfilled quest for this lost body is accomplished through "scripts of the body"⁶⁰," which, like repetitions of the original incarnation, give the flesh – its humors (such as blood or sweat) and its symptoms (wounds, red blotches, or blisters) – an essential role, though a constantly problematic one, especially for religious institutions.

A member of both a patriarchal and conservative society, and a Church that limits women's participation, Catherine follows one of these scripts in her own way. She defines her own flesh as the place where a special encounter between Man and Heaven can occur, where God is still speaking, and furthermore where a regeneration and unity of the Christian Church, even of humankind, are possible. Every week, in her living room converted into a "house
church," she experiences an ecstasy during which she embodies the Virgin. On Good Friday, she "is" both the Mother of God and the Son. During these rituals, she exposes parts of her flesh: her chest marked by writings, as well as her stigmatized hands and feet. An icon of flesh that hundreds of faithful venerate, look at, and touch. Her body merges different images and figures: the Christ, the Virgin and Lebanon seen as an unfinished and suffering embodied space.

Catherine did not choose to create separate religious structure in opposition and reaction against her patriarchal Church and society, by founding a "marginal religion"⁶¹. In a subtler way, and always in relation with her faithful followers, male and female alike, as well as with representatives of the Church, mainly priests, she develops diffuse forms of resistance and criticism which resemble what the Foucauldian notion of counter-conduct encompass. Foucault ends his lecture on counter-conducts by stating that "these counter-conducts are clearly not absolutely external to Christianity, but are actually border-elements (...), which have been continually re-utilized, re-implanted, and taken up again in one or another direction (...) by the Church itself"⁶². Finally, he says that "the struggle was not conducted in the form of absolute exteriority, but rather in the form of the permanent use of tactical elements that are pertinent in the anti-pastoral struggle, insofar as they fall within, in a marginal way, the general horizon of Christianity"⁶³. It seems indeed that these diffuse forms of resistance are paradoxical in that they challenge pastoral power, its structure, and its role of mediation, while being intrinsically linked to it and fully contributing, from the inside, to its perpetuation and evolution. The concept of counter-conduct is crucial for analyzing subtle, complex, and often ambivalent forms of resistance and criticisms. It applies to the actions, practices, and discourses performed in Catherine's "house/church," in the sense that they never lead to a frontal struggle with the institution. Since the two parties share a common horizon, it is in their best interest to keep adjusting themselves to each other.

<footnote n="1">¹ Bernard Heyberger, *Hindiyya. Mystique et criminelle, 1720-1798* (Paris : Aubier, 2001) and Akram Khater, *Embracing the Divine. Passion and politics in the Christian Middle East*, (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2011).</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² Chantal Verdeil, ‘Le corps souffrant de Rifqâ, sainte maronite du XIXe siècle’, *Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée*, n°113-114 (2006) https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/2984 (accessed February, 25 2019).</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ Andrea Graus, Leonardo Rossi and Tine Van Osselaer ‘Virgin mothers and alteri Christi. Stigmatic women and the cult of motherhood in Europe’, in *La Sainte famille. Sexualité, filiation et parentalité dans l’Eglise catholique*, eds. Caroline Sägesser and Cécile Vanderpelen-Diagre in *Problèmes d’Histoire des Religions*, Vol. 24, (Bruxelles: Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 2017), 169-178.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ Michel Foucault, ‘1 March 1978’ in *Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at the Collège de France. 1977-1978* (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 256-283.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵ It is necessary to leave the word "conduct" in all its ambiguity and therefore to use it to refer to both "the activity of conducting (conduire)" and "the way in which one conducts oneself (se conduit), lets oneself be conducted (se</footnote>
<footnote n="37">³⁷ These include in particular images and devotions associated with Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows and with the Sacred Heart. On this topic, see Bernard Heyberger, *Hindiyya, Mystique et criminelle 1720-1798* (Paris: Aubier, 2001).</footnote>

<footnote n="38">³⁸ The devotion to the Sacred Heart was introduced in the Middle East in the early eighteenth century. It played a central part in the life of Hindiyya, the Maronite mystic from Aleppo. On this topic, see Bernard Heyberger, *Hindiyya, Mystique et criminelle*.</footnote>

<footnote n="39">³⁹ On the subject of the nation as an « embodied space », see Anne-Marie Losonczy, 'Dire, chanter et faire. La construction de la "patrie" par l'hymne hongrois et l'exhortation', *Terrain*, n° 29 (1997), 97-112.</footnote>

<footnote n="40">⁴⁰ Elizabeth Picard, *Liban-Syrie intimes étrangers. Un siècle d'interactions sociopolitiques* (Paris : Actes Sud "Sinbad", 2016), 89.</footnote>

<footnote n="41">⁴¹ Khalil Gibran, *Le jardin du prophète*, followed by *Le sable et l'écume* (Paris : Editions du Chêne, 1995), 16.</footnote>

<footnote n="42">⁴² Ahmad Beydoun, *Le Liban. Itinéraires dans une guerre incivile* (Paris : Karthala, 1993), 58.</footnote>

<footnote n="43">⁴³ Emma Aubin-Boltanski, ‘Corps d’apocalypses’, in E. Aubin-Boltanski et C. Gauthier, *Penser la fin du monde*, (Paris : CNRS Editions, 2014), 449-477.</footnote>

<footnote n="44">⁴⁴ Emma Aubin-Boltanski, ‘La Vierge apparaît au Caire (1968)’, in *Le Moyen-Orient. XIXe-XXe siècle*, ed. Leyla Dakhli (Paris: Editions du Seuil coll. « Point histoire », 2016): 113-120, Angie Heo, ‘The Virgin Made Visible: Intercessory Images of Church Territory in Egypt’, *Comparative Studies in Society and History*, Vol. 54, No. 2, (2012), 361-391.</footnote>

<footnote n="45">⁴⁵ William Christian, *Moving crucifixes in modern Spain* (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992)</footnote>

<footnote n="46">⁴⁶ *Ibid.*, 104.</footnote>

<footnote n="47">⁴⁷ *Ibid.*, 105.</footnote>

<footnote n="48">⁴⁸ *Ibid.*, 112.</footnote>

<footnote n="49">⁴⁹ *Ibid.*</footnote>

<footnote n="50">⁵⁰ William Christian and Zoltan Krasznai, ‘The Christ of Limpias and the Passion of Hungary’, *History and anthropology*, 20: 3 (2009), 219-242, 234</footnote>

<footnote n="51">⁵¹ *Ibid.*, 235.</footnote>

<footnote n="52">⁵² *Ibid.*</footnote>

<footnote n="53">⁵³ *Ibid.*, 235-236.</footnote>

<footnote n="54">⁵⁴ *Ibid.*, 236.</footnote>

<footnote n="55">⁵⁵ Monique Scheer ‘Taking Shelter Under Mary’s Mantle. Marian Apparitions in the Early Cold War Years 1947-1953’ in *The "Vision Thing"*. *Studying Divine Intervention*, eds. William Christian and Gabor Klaniczay (Budapest: Collegium Budapest Workshop Series, 2009), 195-218.</footnote>

<footnote n="56">⁵⁶ William Christian and Zoltan Krasznai, 'The Christ of Limpias and the Passion of Hungary', 231.</footnote>

<footnote n="57">⁵⁷ We refer to the notion of metaphor as defined by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, *Les métaphores dans la vie quotidienne*, Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1985): 15: "The essence of a metaphor is that it enables us to understand something and to experience it as something else". [dans les termes de quelque chose d'autre]</footnote>

<footnote n="58">⁵⁸ Joseph Moingt, ‘Polymorphisme du corps du Christ’ in Charles Malamoud and Jean-Pierre Vernant (eds) *Corps des dieux* (Paris : Gallimard "Folio histoire", 1986), 59-82, 74.</footnote>

<footnote n="59">⁵⁹ Michel de Certeau, *The Mystic Fable I. The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries* (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995)</footnote>

<footnote n="60">⁶⁰ *Ibid.*, 81.</footnote>

<footnote n="61">⁶¹ Catherine Wessinger (ed.), *Women's leadership in marginal religions: Explorations outside the mainstream*, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993).</footnote>

<footnote n="62">⁶² Michel Foucault, ‘1 March 1978’, 282.</footnote>

<footnote n="63">⁶³ *Ibid.*</footnote>