Story
In the high mountains of northern Lebanon, in the village of Bekaa-Kafra that lies nearest of all to the heavens, there was born in the year 1828 a child who was given the name Youssef Makhlouf. He was the youngest of five children in a household that feared God. His father reposed when the boy was but two years old, and his pious mother raised her children in the love of Christ and of the Virgin. Two of his uncles had withdrawn into a nearby hermitage to live as monks, and from their example the child drank in, from his earliest years, a thirst for the things of God.
As a youth he tended the flocks upon the mountainsides, and there, in a grotto dedicated to the Mother of God, he would withdraw to pray in silence. The villagers, marvelling at his devotion, already called him "the saint." His heart was set not upon the world but upon the life of solitude and prayer, and at the age of twenty-three he departed quietly for the monastery, leaving the house of his mother behind.
He entered the Lebanese Maronite Order, and laying aside his own name he took the name Charbel, after a holy martyr of Antioch, that he might be clothed in the courage of the martyrs. After a severe novitiate he professed the vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity at the monastery of Saint Maron in Annaya. Sent then to study for the priesthood, he was ordained a priest in the year 1859, and returned to Annaya, where for sixteen years he laboured as a model of every monastic virtue, excelling above all in humility and obedience.
The Lord worked wonders by his hand even in those years. It is told that the lamp by which he kept his nightly vigils was once filled by a servant with water in place of oil, yet at the prayer of the holy monk it burned and gave light through the hours of the night. By this sign his superiors were moved, and in the year 1875 they granted his desire to withdraw entirely into the hermitage of Saints Peter and Paul above the monastery.
There, for three and twenty years, Charbel gave free rein to the desires of his generous heart. He became, as it was said of him, "a man drunk with God." He multiplied his fastings and austerities, sleeping little and praying much, labouring with his hands in the field according to the rule of the hermits. He bore the bitter cold of the mountain winters without ever adding a garment to his poor and single habit; he wore haircloth against his flesh, and kept the long watches of the night from midnight until the celebration of the Liturgy at dawn. His whole life was Eucharistic adoration, silence, and ceaseless prayer.
As the fame of his holiness spread, the people came to him from every side to receive his blessing and to seek healing for their bodies and their lands. By his prayer a man tormented by violent madness was restored to his right mind, and a venomous serpent, at his word, departed in peace and harmed no one. Christians and Muslims and Druze alike honoured the hermit of Annaya, for the grace of God shone through him upon all.
In December of the year 1898, in the week before the Feast of the Nativity, the holy hermit stood to offer the Divine Liturgy as was his custom. As he raised the Holy Gifts on high at the elevation, he was stricken with paralysis, and he could not finish the offering he had begun. For the space of a week he lay, repeating the prayers of his unfinished Liturgy upon his lips, until upon Christmas Eve he reposed quietly in the Lord, attended by his brother monks.
He was buried, but he did not remain hidden. In the months that followed, his brethren beheld a strange light shining over his tomb, and when at length it was opened, his body was found incorrupt and whole, as of one living, and it gave forth a liquid of blood and water. From that fount countless healings flowed: the blind, the deaf, the lame, and the troubled in mind were cured through contact with his relics, and multitudes were drawn to repentance and to faith at his tomb in Annaya.
Saint Charbel Makhlouf, the wonderworking hermit of Lebanon, the man drunk with the love of God, intercedes for the whole world before the throne of Christ. Through his holy prayers, O Lord, have mercy upon us and save us. Amen.