Welcome to Jesus' House!

Peace of Christ! Welcome to the monastery of Mar Yakub, mother house of the Order of the Unity of Antioch founded in 2000. Our community, of Greek-Catholic rite, lives in an ancient monastery of the VIth century, located in Qara, north of Damascus. We have a female and a male branch.

"The Monastery of Mar Yakub (St. James the Persian) is an ancient site dating back to the 6th century. In 1993, during a providential visit, Mother Agnes-Mariam of the Cross, an exclaustrated Carmelite, decided to found the first Antiochian monastery there. After its rehabilitation, the site became an independent monastery under the vigilance of the local bishop (sui iuris eparchialis) according to the canons of the Eastern Catholic Churches N° 410-572. H.E. Abraham Nehmeh, Greek-Melkite Catholic Metropolitan of Homs, Hama and Yabroud, promulgated an Episcopal Decree on September 14, 2000 erecting both a monastery and a female monastic community under the title : "Nuns of the Unity of Antioch" having as its mother house the said Monastery of St. James the Persian and whose supreme aim is to "serve the Unity between the Antiochian Patriarchal Churches" by renewing the common Antiochian cultural heritage at the spiritual, theological, patristic, liturgical and artistic levels". 

2. H.E. Bishop Nehmeh expanded the foundation to include a male monastic branch on the day of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, August 15, 2004. On March 25, 2005, he promulgated the code of formation for the aspirants to the foundation of this branch". 
(Constitutions n°1-2).

Our daily life is characterized by an inner search of silence, hand-or intellectual labor and communitarian life.  We live a coenobitic life with an anachoretic vocation. This implies that each one of us, amidst his daily tasks, first of all searches for inner union with Christ.