Religious life at Mar Chaya under the wise direction of F. Solomon de Mechmech was, from the beginning, a harmonious division between traditional monastic observance and the spread of pastoral and apostolic work in the surrounding district.Having lived side by side with Mgr. Gabriel de Blawza, listening to his council and following his example, F. Solomon was imbued with his spirituality.

Now Mgr. Gabriel, after his childhood, youth, and the years of formation in religion, all lived in the Holy Valley, had acquired an exceptional experience of liturgical prayer, of silent meditation, of life in community, of manual work, and of abstinence, following the secular tradition of the Kadisha.

When he was promoted to the dignity of the episcopate in the town of Alep, which was then a hive of pastoral activity, he came into contact with all the forms of apostolate and Christian teaching in use by the local clergy, and the eastern Congregations. This gave him a new wealth of experience. With an open and creative mind, he was able to make in himself a perfect equilibrium between the man of action and the man of introspection, treating efficiently with material things when they were for the Glory of God, anxious under all circumstances to preach the message of the Gospel, but at the same time greedy for meditation and feeding on liturgical prayer. At the time when the Alepan Rule had been so patiently conceived and tried out, it had become on the one hand sufficiently clear cut to establish a solid foundation, and on the other hand supple enough to permit adaptations according to the specific circumstances of a time and place. And it is with this as an ideal that the Antonine adopted it and have observed it for almost three centuries.

The 18th. century was above all Marked by the progressive development of the Congregation, the construction or rebuilding and arrangement of 17 monasteries in all the districts of Lebanon. An Antonine monk of Ghazir was enthroned as bishop of Marjayoun, and a monk from Mar Chaya, expressly as requested by the Patriarch, became curate at St. Jean-d'Arc. It must be said that he came from Jerusalem.

That century also saw the creation of the Congregation of Antonine Sisters. When the convent of Qattin was taken over by the Antonine it was a mixed convent. So it was necessary to find a solution for the nuns. The text of a document from then, follows : "We permit our dearly beloved sons in the Lord, F. Thomas, General Superior, And the assistant Antonine , to create a convent dedicated to St. Anthony of Padua, in Jezzine our parish, to be the house of our daughters, the nuns who have pronounced their vows according to the Constitutions of our sons the above mentioned clergy, and who previously had been established in the convent of St. Peter at Qattin. And this in a better obedience to directives of our Antiochan Seat. That this shall be a document in their hands, to be brought to the knowledge of all whom it may concern" Joseph Peter, Patriarch of Antioch.

The convent at Jezzine later reverted to the Antonine , but the convents St. Elie of Ghazir and Mar Doumit of Roumie were given to the Antonine Sisters. As was the convent of Ain Alaq also, where the Congregation has installed its novitiate.

The 19th. century was much more eventful. Many monks became victims during the different massacres, and the Order counted considerable material loss. Despite all this, at the end of the century, it totaled some 300 monks divided among 23 convents. An Antonine from Qattin became bishop of Tripoli.

During the 20th. century, the social and political upheavals brought about by the two world wars and by the war in Lebanon, as well as the rapid evolution in all domains during the last decades, have modified some exterior aspects of Antonine life without changing the basis of its spirituality.

In these last few years of the third century since its foundation, the Maronite Antonine Order has 23 convents in the Lebanon, one convent in Syria, two in Canada, one in France, a residence in Belgium, a study house in Rome, as well as the General Procure.

The congregation totals a hundred priest-monks, plus the students in theology, the novices, and the postulants.