St Charbel Makhlouf was a Lebanese Maronite monk known widely for his holiness and miraculous healings in answer to prayers at his tomb. He became a hermit for the last decades of hife, and his body remained incorrupt in his grave for many decades.
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Who Is St Charbel?
St Charbel Makhlouf was a Lebanese Maronite monk known widely for his holiness and miraculous healings in answer to prayers at his tomb. He became a hermit for the last decades of hife, and his body remained incorrupt in his grave for many decades.
Youssef Antoun Makhlouf was born on May 8th, 1828 in North Lebanon.
He grew up with four siblings in a pious home, but his father died when he was just three years old.
He was attracted to the monastic life as lived by his two hermit uncles and spent time at their hermitage of St Antonious Kozhaya.
At 23 years old, he began to formally train to be a monk and entered teh Lebanese Maronite Order, taking the name of Charbel, a second-century martyr.
He received the sacrament of Holy Orders in Bkerke on July 23rd, 1859. From 1859 to 1875, St Charbel lived at St Maron Monastery.
He received permission to live the eremetical life at the Sts Peter and Paul hermitage, a chapel under the care of the monastery.
St Charbel spent the rest of his life, 23 years, at the hermitage, praying and worshiping God.
He had a stroke in mid-December and died about a week later on Christmas Eve, 1898.
He was buried in the St Maron Monastery cemetery in Annaya.
Reports of witnesses after his death started pouring in. One said that he saw bright lights around the saint’s grave. They exhumed his body and found it still intact and secreting blood.
His body was moved to a special coffin and pilgrims began visiting the tomb praying for his intercession. Many received miraculous cures.
Pope Pius X1 approved the beginning of the beatification process in 1925.
In 1950 and 1952, his tomb was again opened, and his body remained intact, like a living body.
St Charbel was beatified on December 5th, 1965, by Pope Paul VI and canonized by the same pope on October 9th, 1977.
His feastday is the 3rd Sunday in July on the Maronite Calendar and July 24 on the Roman Calendar.