Born in a small mountain village in the region of Bsharri in Northern Lebanon on May 8th, 1828, St. Sharbel was born to a poor family of 7. St. Sharbel was baptized in into the Maronite Catholic Church, August of that year as Youssef Antoun Makhlouf, and with his two brothers and two sisters lived respectable lives in the village. The children all learned Arabic and Syriac from their village priest, as well as some other education. In 1831, St. Sharbel’s father returned home from military service in the Turkish army, where he soon passed away.
As a young man, St. Sharbel started his religious life early, dedicating his life to God long before he entered religious life. He could always be found praying or studying, and his piety was eventually noticed, resulting in being called “the Saint” by his fellow villagers. He worked as a shepherd, which allowed him to spend time in prayer while the livestock grazed. St. Sharbel would eventually take the herd to an area around a small grotto, where he would spend most of his day deep in prayer before an icon of Our Blessed Lady.
Taking after this uncles, St. Sharbel left home at the age of 23 to begin his first year in the monastery of Elige in Mayfouk. It is here that he chose the name “Sharbel” out of respect for an early martyr in the Antiochene Church. The following year, he was moved to the monastery of Annaya, and on November 1st 1853, St. Sharbel professed his vows. After professing his vows, St. Sharbel received his training in theology from St. Nemtallah El-Hardini, who was also declared a saint in 2004. St. Sharbel was fully ordained as a priest in 1859, where he returned to the monastery of Annaya to live out a life of prayer and work with his brother monks. St. Sharbel was praised by the other monks for living out a life of complete obedience to his superiors, as well as for living a life full of mortification.
Eventually, St. Sharbel requested to leave the monastery and live out a solitary life at a nearby hermitage that had been vacant for some time. His superior was hesitant at first, but soon agreed after witnessing St. Sharbel perform what is called “the Miracle of the Lamp,” where a worker refilled St. Sharbels lamp with water, but the lamp continued to burn as if it was filled with oil. The lamp continued to burn throughout the night.
On February 15th 1875, St. Sharbel journeyed to the hermitage for the first time. He lived out his 23 years at this hermitage in prayer and contemplation, in addition to his manual labor in the fields. It is here that St. Sharbel exemplified self sacrifice and detachment from the world. St. Sharbel would follow this path as a hermit entirely, leaving his hermitage only with the permission of his superior, where he would venture to the village to heal the sick and to cast out demons.
On December 16th 1898, while celebrating the Divine Liturgy, St. Sharbel suffered a stroke. He was cared for by his brother monks, where he lingered on for 8 days in terrible pain. He would offer up his suffering and maintained constant prayer. Those close to him during these last days reported that he would continually pray the prayer that was interrupted by his stroke, “Father of Truth, behold your son, the sacrifice in whom you ware well pleased. Accept this offering of He who died for me. Behold His blood shed on Golgotha for my salvation. It pleads for me. For His sake, accept my offering. Many are my sins, but greater is your mercy. When placed on a scale, Your mercy prevails over the weight of the mountains known only to You. Consider the sin and consider the atonement. The atonement is greater and exceeds the sin. Your beloved Son sustained the nails and the lance because of my sins, so in His sufferings You are satisfied and I live.”
St. Sharbel finally went to be with the lord on Christmas eve of 1898. He was buried in the monastic tomb. St. Sharbels superior, Father Antonios recorded the life and death of his brother monk, where he wrote “What God will perform after his death will be sufficent proof of his exemplary behavior in the observance of his vows, to a degree such that we can say that his obedience was angelic, not human.”
After St. Sharbel’s death, visitors to the tomb began to report lights emanating from his tomb to the brother monks at the monastery. Because of the multitude of reports that flooded the Maronite Patriarch, St. Sharbels body was exhumed. When the tomb was opened, they found St. Sharbels body incorrupt and free of decay. On top of being free of corruption, the body also seemed to exude a red oil like fluid, which was later found to be a mixture of blood and sweat. St. Sharbels body was moved to a special coffin and moved to a new tomb, which was the subject of many pilgrimages by the faithful.
Since that time, tens of thousands of miracles have been reported and attributed to St. Sharbel, mostly involving miraculous healing. For sixty-five years St. Sharbels body continued to bleed and miracles continued to happen at an astounding rate. Over time, the oil and blood that flowed from his body caused his coffin to decay, and the monks periodically moved his body into new coffins. In 1976, when his coffin was opened again, the monks discovered that the red fluid had dried, and all that remained in the coffin were the bones of the saint. St. Sharbels case was eventually reviewed by the Vatican, and in 1977 he was canonized in the universal Church.
Of the many miracles that occurred, one of the most famous examples is the healing of Nohad El Shamy in 1993, who was stricken with partial paralysis from a blood clot. The mother of 12 was unable to move her left leg, her left arm, and the left side of her mouth. She prayed for a miracle and was visited in a dream by two Maronite Monks. One of the monks put his hands on her neck, and began to remove the blood clot which had caused her paralysis. When she awoke there were wounds on her neck where the monk had touched her. She was fully healed and able to move freely. The next night she fell asleep, she was visited by the monk again who told her “I cut you by the power of God so the people could see you, because some people have strayed away from praying, from attending church, and from respecting the saints, and you cannot do anything to people. But whoever needs anything from me, I, Father Sharbel, am always present in the hermitages. I ask you to visit the hermitage on the 22nd of each month and attend the Divine Liturgy, as long as you live.”
To this day, the Monks at the Saint Maron Monastery in Annaya continue to register reports of healing and other miracles that are attributed to the intercession of Saint Sharbel. Many of these miracles have been categorized as worthy of belief by the Catholic Church, and involve being healed by blessed incense, oil, or by wearing blessed clothing. Hundreds of documented miracles are registered every year with the monastery, where on St. Sharbels feast days they have distributed holy communion to over 300,000 faithful. At this point, over 30,000 miracles have been reported to the Shrine. Many muslims have begun to make pilgrimages to the monastery to seek the intercession of the Saint, hoping that through his relationship to Christ our Lord, he can do what their faith cannot.
St. Sharbel, pray for us.