Pierre el-Raï

Pierre, you always had dirt under your fingernails and a story on your lips. I can see you now, in the little garden behind the church in Zahlé, kneeling in the earth with that focused grin of yours, coaxing life from the stubborn Lebanese soil. You’d hold up a vine-ripened tomato like it was a holy relic, and in a way, I suppose it was—another testament to God’s grace you found in the everyday. You weren’t just our priest; you were our gardener, our listener, the man who’d show up at a family’s door with a basket of figs and an innate, quiet understanding of whatever joy or sorrow was blooming inside their home. For you, family was the whole messy, beautiful parish. You celebrated baptisms with the same tearful joy as you held the hands of the grieving, your own eyes shining with a compassion that felt ancient and new all at once. You found your