Michael Shami

Biography

Fr. Michael Shami is Syro-Maronite priest of the Eparchy of Our Lady of Lebanon of Los Angeles, where he serves as Director of Liturgy and representative to the Maronite Patriarchal Liturgical Committee. His research focuses primarily on the late antique sources of West Syriac liturgy, and how they are received and reinterpreted overtime. More broadly, he is also interested in how changes in liturgical practice over time are received and narrated. His dissertation follows this research theme, as it investigates how the hymnody of Jacob of Sarug (to whom is attributed the third largest corpus of any late antique author) is appropriated and informs the West Syriac imagination of the afterlife within liturgical rituals.