Saint Sharbel    
  
                                                                                           

Youssef Antoun Makhlouf  was born on May 8, 1828 in Bekaa Kafra, a small mountain village in North Lebanon. In 1851, at the age of 23,  he  left his family to start his first year of novitiate in  the Monastery of Our Lady in Mayfouq.  In 1852, he moved to the Monastery of Saint Maron in Annaya.  There,  he professed his monastic vows of chastity, poverty and obedience on November 1, 1853 and took the name Sharbel after a 2nd century martyr in the Antiochen Church.  On July 23, 1859, he  was ordained to the sacred priesthood for the Lebanese Maronite Order. 

He spent 16 years in the Monastery of Saint Maron in Annaya, praying and working in the fields with his brother monks. Then, hearing the call of God to a life of greater solitude and prayer, he was given permission to become a hermit at the hermitage of Saints Peter and Paul that was under the care of the Monastery of Saint Maron, Annaya.  February 15, 1875 marked the first day of his life in the hermitage. For the next 23 years he gave himself in total dedication to God and the Church living a life rooted in the Scriptures, love for the Eucharist and the Mother of God.

 He died on December 24, 1898. His superior wrote "What God will perform after his death will be sufficient 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."

Following his death, a bright light was seen surrounding his tomb. The superiors ordered the tomb to be opened, and they found his body perfectly preserved and exuding sweat and blood. Scientific experts and doctors were and are still unable to give medical explanations for the incorruptibility and flexibility of the body. Since his death, thousands of recorded miracles have been attributed through  his intercession—so many, in fact, that he is known as the “Wonderworker of the East.”
 
On December 5, 1965, Saint Pope Paul VI presided over the beatification ceremony of Saint Sharbel  at the conclusion  of the Second Vatican Council.  Saint Pope Paul VI declared: “ … A hermit of the Lebanese mountain is inscribed in the number of the blessed … a new eminent member of monastic sanctity is enriching, by his example and his intercession, the entire Christian people… May he make us understand, in a world largely fascinated by wealth and comfort, the paramount value of poverty, penance and asceticism, to liberate the soul in its ascent to God.”

On October 9, 1977, Saint Pope Paul VI presided over the canonization of Blessed Sharbel at Saint Peter's Basilica. 

Saint Sharbel, pray for us.