On July 24, the Church celebrates the life of St. Charbel Makhlouf, a Maronite Catholic priest, monk and hermit who is known for working miracles both during his life and after his death.
On the occasion of his beatification in 1965, the Eastern Catholic hermit was described by Pope Paul VI as "a new, eminent member of monastic sanctity" who "through his example and his intercession is enriching the entire Christian people."
Born into humble circumstances in Lebanon during 1828, Yussef Antoun Makhlouf was the youngest of Antoun Zaarour Makhlouf and Brigitta Elias al-Shediyaq's five children. Antoun, who had been taken away from the family and forced into hard labor, died when his youngest son was only 3.
Yussef studied at the parish school and tended to his family's cow. Engaged in prayer and solitude from an early age, he spent a great deal of time outdoors in the fields and pastures near his village, contemplating God amid the inspiring views of Lebanon's valleys and mountains.
His uncle and guardian Tanious wanted the boy to continue working with him, while his mother wanted him to marry a young woman. Yussef had other plans, however, and left home in 1851 without informing anyone.
Yussef would become "Brother Charbel," after making a pilgrimage on foot to his new monastic home. In this, he followed the example of his maternal uncles, who were already living as solitary monks at the Hermitage of St. Paul in the Qadisha Valley.
Charbel took his monastic vows in November of 1853, during a solemn ceremony which was closed to the public and off-limits even to his family. He subsequently studied for the priesthood and was ordained, returning to the Monastery of St. Maron.
The priest-monk lived and served in the monastery for 19 years, showing great devotion to the life of prayer, manual work and contemplative silence.
Charbel's superiors observed God's "supernatural power" at work in his life, and he became known as a wonder-worker even among some Muslims. In 1875, he was granted permission to live as a solitary monk in a nearby hermitage dedicated to Sts. Peter and Paul.
Rigorous asceticism, and a profound union with God, continued to characterize the monk's life for the next 23 years. Deeply devoted to God's Eucharistic Presence, he suffered a stroke while celebrating the Divine Liturgy on Dec. 16, 1898. He died on Christmas Eve of that year.
St. Charbel's tomb has been a site for pilgrimages since his death. Hundreds of miracles are believed to have occurred through his intercession with God, both in Lebanon and around the world.
He was canonized in 1977 by Pope Paul VI, who had earlier hailed the Lebanese Maronite saint as an "admirable flower of sanctity blooming on the stem of the ancient monastic traditions of the East."
— Catholic News Agency
Did you know?
The feast of St. Charbel Makhluf was added to the Proper of Saints, the part of the Missal that includes prayers for the observances of saints' days, in 2012 at the same time the revised edition of the Roman Missal was launched. The Proper of Saints follows a calendar established by the Vatican and modified by the bishops of each country to include saints of local importance. Any changes to a national or diocesan calendar require the Vatican's consent.
On July 26 the Church commemorates the parents of the Virgin Mary, Sts. Joachim and Anne. The couple's faith and perseverance brought them through the sorrow of childlessness, to the joy of conceiving and raising the immaculate and sinless woman who would give birth to Christ.
The New Testament contains no specific information about the lives of the Virgin Mary's parents, but other documents outside of the Biblical canon do provide some details. Although these writings are not considered authoritative in the same manner as the Bible, they outline some of the Church's traditional beliefs about Joachim, Anne and their daughter.
The "Protoevangelium of James," which was probably put into its final written form in the early second century, describes Mary's father Joachim as a wealthy member of one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Joachim was deeply grieved, along with his wife Anne, by their childlessness. "He called to mind Abraham," the early Christian writing says, "that in the last day God gave him a son Isaac."
Joachim and Anne began to devote themselves to rigorous prayer and fasting, in isolation from one another and from society. They regarded their inability to conceive a child as a surpassing misfortune and a sign of shame among the tribes of Israel.
As it turned out, however, the couple was to be blessed even more abundantly than Abraham and Sarah had. An angel revealed this to Anne when he appeared to her and prophesied that all generations would honor their future child: "The Lord has heard your prayer, and you shall conceive, and shall bring forth; and your seed shall be spoken of in all the world."
After Mary's birth, according to the "Protoevangelium of James," Anne "made a sanctuary" in the infant girl's room, and "allowed nothing common or unclean" on account of the special holiness of the child. The same writing records that when Mary was 1 year old, her father "made a great feast, and invited the priests, and the scribes, and the elders, and all the people of Israel."
"And Joachim brought the child to the priests," the account continues, "and they blessed her, saying: 'O God of our fathers, bless this child, and give her an everlasting name to be named in all generations' ... And he brought her to the chief priests; and they blessed her, saying: 'O God most high, look upon this child, and bless her with the utmost blessing, which shall be forever.'"
This apocryphal account goes on to describe how Mary's parents, along with the temple priests, subsequently decided that she would be offered to God as a consecrated virgin for the rest of her life, and enter a chaste marriage with the carpenter Joseph.
Sts. Joachim and Anne have been a part of the Church's liturgical calendar for many centuries. Devotion to their memory is particularly strong in the Eastern Catholic churches, where their intercession is invoked by the priest at the end of each Divine Liturgy. The Eastern churches, however, celebrate the feast of Sts. Joachim and Anne on a different date, Sept. 9.
—Catholic News Agency