Orphaned at the age of three, born in lands watered by the blood of martyrs, he forged his soul in the image of Christ, following the road to Calvary. In the crucible of inner suffering for love of God, he lived out his priesthood, giving us an example of surrender in the hands of Providence in the search for spiritual goods, in the middle of the 19th century.
Newsroom (28/12/2022 13:00, Gaudium Press). Abdullah Youssef Makhlouf was born on May 8, 1828, in a small mountain village in Lebanon called Beqa-Kafra. He was the youngest of five children of a modest Catholic family, dedicated to agriculture, and who brought up their children with solid faith and ardent devotion to the Mother of God. This deep-rooted Catholicism is a characteristic of the Lebanese, because of the various persecutions they have suffered, including that of 1860, where the Druze (a branch of the Muslims) martyred more than 22,000 Catholics, not counting the orphans and women sold into Turkish harems.
A Childhood Steeped in Prayer
Youssef received his early education in the village school, which was run and supported by the parish church, belonging to the Maronite rite. When he was only three years old, his father was called up by the army for a war, after which he fell seriously ill and died. Throughout the village, young Youssef was known for his uprightness and simplicity, as well as for his sincere piety. Prayer was a major point in his life, and he devoted much of his time to prayer. As was common among local boys he would tend the flock in the afternoons and it is said that during these times he would order the animals not to interrupt him while he was praying…
Exemplary Religious
At a certain point, having reached his youth, he began to ask the help of Mary Most Holy to become a monk and enter religious life.
When he expressed his great desire to become a religious to his family, they changed the subject or paid no attention to him. His family longed for his marriage to a young woman of the village named Mariam, so much so that, without warning, he left home in 1851, at the age of 23, and withdrew to the monastery of Our Lady of Mayfoug, of the monks of the Lebanese Maronite Order. Upon entering the novitiate, he chose the name Charbel,[1] in honor of a martyr of the Church of Antioch.
Of robust complexion, Charbel was known for his willingness to serve, often offering to perform the most arduous and even humiliating tasks. In his second year as a novice, he was sent to the monastery of St. Maron in the city of Annaya, where he solemnly made his monastic profession, taking the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in 1853, at the age of 25.
Some time later, Charbel was sent to the monastery of St. Cyprian in Kiffane, where he completed his studies for the priesthood. With great commitment and dedication, Charbel was a good student, always among the best in his class. On July 23, 1858, his priestly ordination took place in Bkerke at the Patriarchal residence, after which he returned to the monastery of St. Maron, where he spent sixteen years of monastic life.
When Charbel arrived at the monastery, he was already known as a man of prayer and very mature for his age. Within the monastic life, the practice of virtue continued on his upward path: during this period, his devotion to the Blessed Sacrament was notably manifested in the many hours he spent on his knees adoring Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
Within the community, it was customary to see him performing the most humble and difficult labors. His brothers in the habit remembered Charbel’s great respect for everyone, his frequent fasts and acts of mortification, as well as his steadfast obedience, making him a model of religious life, so that those around him could see his growing union with God.
A Miracle Paves the Way to Solitude
In the course of time, Father Charbel felt called by God to the hermitage. According to the monastic tradition of the East, the fullness of contemplation is attained through the solitary life. At first his solicitude was not answered because of the lack of room in the hermitages the Order had in the mountains. But one day, the superior noticed that late at night there was light in one of the windows of the monastery. This was very rare, because no monk had enough oil for the lamps to stay lit for so long. Wanting to check what was going on, and seeing that it was Father Charbel’s cell, he went to it and found him praying. To his surprise, in fact, the priest had no oil, but the fuel for his lamp was water, because it was night and he needed to finish his prayers. In view of such a miracle, they consented to let Father Charbel retire to the monastic life, in 1875.
The saint spent the next twenty-three years of his life in the most austere way possible. He practiced severe mortifications and ate frugally only once a day. In spite of living so poorly, he was always characterized by the personal cleanliness and order proper to a virtuous person. He usually celebrated his Holy Masses at noon, in order to spend the whole morning in preparation and the rest of the day in thanksgiving. During this period, he worked countless miracles of healing on people who turned to him for prayers.
The miracles did not take long to appear
On December 16, 1898, during the elevation of the Eucharist at Holy Mass, Father Charbel suffered an attack of paralysis. After an agony of eight days, he surrendered his soul to God. The superior of the monastery of San Maron, knowing the holiness and miracles that he would work in the future, wrote in the community’s journal: “On December 24, 1898, Father Charbel of Beka-Kafra, hermit, died of paralysis, provided with the holy sacraments, at the age of 70. [What he will do later dispenses me from giving further details about his life. Faithful to his wishes of exemplary obedience, his life was more angelic than human.”[2]
The miracles were not long in coming. The night after his death, the inhabitants of the neighboring houses witnessed lights rising and falling from Father Charbel’s tomb, a phenomenon that lasted for 45 days. After four months, the monks asked permission to exhume the body, and found it totally incorrupt and with limbs entirely flexible, exuding a liquid that required them to change his garmets every fortnight. The saint’s body was cleaned and placed in a new coffin, and taken back to the monastery, where it remained in a room closed to the public, where no one was allowed to enter. Some time later, they noticed that the liquid began to run down the stairs leading to the room. They tried to dry the body by placing it on the monastery’s terrace for five months, but to no avail. Finally, they made a vault in front of the building, and placed the saint in it, to be venerated by the pilgrims. Hundreds of people began to pray in front of him, obtaining some of the miraculous balm that exuded from his body, as well as pieces of the habit, with which God worked physical and spiritual cures in quantity.
Further Exhumations, Continued Miracles
Doctors from different places examined the body and could not explain the phenomenon. After almost thirty years outside the tomb, it was transferred to its second grave in 1927 in the convent chapel in a sealed coffin by the commission in charge of its investigation. Outside the wall, there was an inscription on the stone that read “tomb of Father Charbel of Beka-Kafra, hermit”
In 1950, a pilgrim noticed that the stone on which the inscription could be seen was wet, and the liquid was the already characteristic transudation of Father Charbel. It is worth mentioning that the distance between the inscription and the body was more than thirty centimeters, and of solid stone. The Order decided to make a second exhumation, finding the relics in the same state of preservation. The body was buried in the same crypt, and is said to have remained incorrupt until his beatification in 1965.
In 1950, the monastery of St. Charbel began recording miracles that occurred near the tomb. In just two years, more than twelve hundred entries were collected. Many of the miracles cited involve miraculous recoveries from illness and deformities. One exceptional account is that of a seamstress who had suffered from a hunchback, as well as other deformities, since childhood. She visited the tomb to pray for her relatives, and was healed. The doctor treating her testified to her miraculous healing: she had become a normal woman without any deformity. Cures accepted for the beatification of St. Charbel include the healing of a severe stomach ulcer; the restoration of sight to a man with a torn retina, and the healing of a cancer of the throat. The are miracles still being attributed to his intercession in many different countries, including the United States.
St. Charbel was canonized on October 8, 1977. Pope Paul VI said of him, “He helped us to understand, in a world often fascinated by riches and comfort, the irreplaceable value of poverty, penance and asceticism in liberating the soul in its ascent to God.”[3]
By Rafael Ramírez
[1] Aramaic compound name meaning “God is King”.
[2] MAHFOUZ, Joseph. Saint Charbel Makhlouf. Paris: Jounieh. 2008. p.3
[3] Cf. Ball, Anne. Modern Saints: Their lives and faces. Illinois: Tan Books and Publishers Inc. 1983.
