Saint Charbel Makhlouf

Life and historical context

Youssef Antoun Makhlouf was born on 8 May 1828 in the mountain village of Bekaa Kafra in northern Lebanon, the youngest of five children of Antoun Zaarour Makhlouf, a poor peasant who worked as a mule driver hauling grain, and Brigitta Elias al-Shidiac, his wife. The Makhlouf family was Maronite Catholic, part of the ancient Eastern Catholic Church of Lebanon that has been in full communion with Rome since the union confirmed at the Lateran Council of 1215. Antoun died when Youssef was three years old, and his mother remarried a man who would later be ordained a Maronite priest, the standard Eastern Catholic discipline.¹

Youssef grew up in the small mountain village under conditions of extreme rural poverty. He showed early signs of a contemplative vocation: as a young shepherd, he would spend long hours at prayer in a cave near the village, which the local people called the cave of the saint even before he had taken any religious vows. At the age of twenty-three, in 1851, he left home secretly (without his family's permission, in keeping with the Eastern Catholic monastic tradition) and entered the Monastery of Our Lady of Mayfouq, a Lebanese Maronite Order foundation. He received the religious name Charbel, after Saint Charbel of Edessa, an early Christian martyr of the third century. After his novitiate, he was sent to the monastery of Saints Cyprian and Justina in Kfifan for theological studies.

He was ordained a Maronite priest on 23 July 1859, at the age of thirty-one, by Bishop Joseph al-Mariami of Tannourine. He was assigned to the monastery of Saint Maron of Annaya, which would be his community for the rest of his life. After sixteen years as a community priest there, in 1875, with the permission of his superiors, he received the special grace of the Maronite Order to become a hermit at the dependent hermitage of Saints Peter and Paul, attached to the monastery. He lived in this hermitage for the next twenty-three years, until his death in 1898, in conditions of extreme penance: a single small cell, a stone for a pillow, a coarse hair shirt, the standard Maronite monastic habit, daily Mass, the full Liturgy of the Hours sung alone in his small chapel, and substantial fasts.²

The first reports of supernatural phenomena associated with Charbel's life are recorded by his fellow monks during his lifetime. He is reported to have lived for years on a single small daily meal taken after Mass, often consisting only of leftovers from the community refectory. Multiple witnesses recorded apparitions of light around his cell at night during prayer. He celebrated his last Mass on the morning of 16 December 1898 and suffered a stroke during the elevation of the chalice. He died eight days later, on 24 December 1898, at the age of seventy. The community buried him without a coffin, in the simple Lebanese monastic tradition, in the monastery cemetery.

Theological and spiritual significance

The principal Catholic significance of Saint Charbel Makhlouf, beyond the witness of his hidden hermit life, is the extraordinary record of miracles attributed to his intercession in the century since his death. The Maronite monastery of Annaya documents thousands of healings and other miracles attributed to him, in considerable specificity. The cause for his beatification and canonization in the twentieth century was supported by the rigorous examination of two principal miracles, but the supporting documentation also includes several thousand additional reports of healings.

A peculiar physical phenomenon associated with his tomb is one of the foundations of his cult. After his burial, his body was reported to have remained intact and to have produced a continuous oily liquid that exuded from the body and seeped through the burial shroud. The phenomenon was so remarkable that the body was exhumed in 1899 (four months after burial), in 1927, and again in 1950 by ecclesiastical commissions; the body was each time found incorrupt and the oil continued to flow. The phenomenon ceased after the saint's beatification in 1965, in keeping with what the Maronite tradition has recognized as a sign that the canonization process had completed the public Catholic recognition of his sanctity.³

The theological significance of Saint Charbel within the Catholic Church is principally as a sign of the unity of the Catholic Church across the Latin and Eastern traditions. He is the most venerated Eastern Catholic saint of the modern era. His canonization in 1977 by Pope Saint Paul VI was a deliberate Catholic affirmation that the holiness of the universal Church is one in Christ and is not the property of any single ritual tradition.

He was beatified by Pope Saint Paul VI on 5 December 1965 (during the closing days of the Second Vatican Council) and canonized by the same pope on 9 October 1977. He is the first saint of the modern era to be canonized as a member of an Eastern Catholic Church.⁴

Devotion and liturgical observance

The feast of Saint Charbel Makhlouf is celebrated on the third Sunday of July in the Maronite Catholic liturgy and on 24 July in the universal Roman Calendar (with the rank of optional memorial in the Latin Rite, and as a major feast in the Maronite Catholic tradition). In Lebanon, where Charbel is the principal national saint of the Maronite Catholic Church, the feast is observed with extensive civic and ecclesiastical solemnity.

The principal pilgrimage destination associated with Saint Charbel is the Monastery of Saint Maron at Annaya, Lebanon, where the saint lived for forty-six years and where his tomb (now containing his body in a glass-walled reliquary) draws an estimated several million pilgrims annually. The hermitage of Saints Peter and Paul, his cell of twenty-three years, is preserved as a chapel and museum on the monastery grounds. The Maronite parishes of the Lebanese diaspora across the world (in the United States, France, Australia, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, and elsewhere) preserve secondary relics and devotion.

The traditional iconography of Saint Charbel shows him in the black Maronite monastic habit (with the eskim, the distinctive black hood and pointed beard of Lebanese Maronite monks), holding a crucifix, a rosary, or sometimes a loaf of bread (in reference to his eucharistic and ascetical life). He is frequently depicted at prayer before the altar, often with rays of light visible from his hands or face. His liturgical color on the feast is white.

Prayers and novenas associated with Saint Charbel

The principal devotion to Saint Charbel is the Novena to Saint Charbel Makhlouf, prayed for healing of physical illness (in connection with the extraordinary record of healings at Annaya), for the spiritual unity of the Catholic Church (Latin and Eastern), and for the gift of contemplative prayer. The novena is most commonly prayed in the nine days leading up to the third Sunday of July or to 24 July.

A traditional brief invocation of Saint Charbel:

Saint Charbel, hidden hermit of Annaya, intercede for us. As your prayers have brought healing to many in body and soul, so may they bring healing to us, that the love of Christ which sustained you in the silence of the cave may sustain us in the demands of our own pilgrimage.

Catholics commonly pair Saint Charbel devotions with the Holy Rosary, the Maronite Service of the Word, and the Anima Christi. For the broader theological context, see Communion of Saints and the broader Catholic devotion to the Eastern Catholic Churches.

Sources

Footnotes

1. Paul Daher, OLM, Une grande figure du Liban: Le Père Charbel Makhlouf (1956, the standard French-language biography). Joseph Eid, Le Père Charbel: Moine Libanais Maronite (1937). Catholic Encyclopedia entries on the Maronite Church and on Saint Charbel are available in updated post-1977 digital editions. ↩

2. The records of the Lebanese Maronite Order at Bkerké and at the Annaya monastery preserve the principal documentary sources for Charbel's monastic life and for the testimonies gathered during the canonization process. ↩

3. The medical documentation of the body's incorruption and of the oil phenomenon is preserved in the records of the Maronite Patriarchate at Bkerké and was the subject of the medical commissions of 1899, 1927, and 1950. The records of the cause of canonization preserved at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome contain the miracle dossiers. ↩

4. Pope Saint Paul VI, beatification homily of 5 December 1965 and canonization homily of 9 October 1977. Both available at vatican.va. ↩