Isaac the Lebanese

Isaac the Lebanese, with the secular name Fares Atallah, was a hieromonk and Athonite confessor, especially revered in the Church of Antioch, and a disciple of Saint Paisios the Athonite. He was born on 12 April 1937 in the village of Nabay on Mount Lebanon, the son of Nemr and Martha Atallah, the eldest of ten children. His mother died when he was twelve. He learned carpentry, worked in Beirut and took lessons in Byzantine chant. For two years he worked as a cook in a luxury restaurant in Beirut. In 1962 he left everything, handed his savings to his father and set out for the Dormition Monastery in Bkeftin, thanking God that his dream had come true.

After a few months he moved to Balamand, where he studied at the seminary, and in 1963 he was ordained deacon with the name Philip. He learned Greek on Patmos and studied theology at Thessaloniki, where he served at the church of Saint Demetrius; there he met Elder Paisios, his future spiritual father. Back in Lebanon he was ordained priest and from 1973 restored the monastery of Saint George at Hamatoura. The civil war of 1975 forced him to leave, and in 1978 he settled permanently in Greece. In 1979 he received the great schema on the Holy Mountain with the name Isaac, after Saint Isaac the Syrian, from the hand of Paisios.

At first he was at Stavronikita, then he rebuilt the Resurrection cell at Kapsala near Karyes, where he struggled in solitude and dug a grave for himself in the garden, which he censed daily. He was confessor of the pupils of the Athoniada School and of many people, gentle and diligent, with a fine voice. He translated into Arabic the Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, the Ladder and writings of Paisios. He also began the first biography of Paisios, which his disciples finished and published in 2004. Among Arabs his cell was called the "Antiochian gate of Athos."

In the summer of 1998 he fell ill and went to a hospital in Thessaloniki, where he received the nearness of the end with calm. He reposed on 3 July 1998. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.