Feast Day of Miraculous Saint Charbel

July 24 is the Feast Day of Saint Charbel 

Joseph Zaroun Maklouf was raised by an uncle because his father, a mule driver, died when Joseph was only three. At the age of 23, Joseph joined the Monastery of St. Maron at Annaya, Lebanon, and took the name Sharbel in honor of a second-century martyr. He professed his final vows in 1853, and was ordained six years later

Following the example of the fifth-century Saint Maron, Sharbel lived as a hermit from 1875, until his death. His reputation for holiness prompted people to seek him to receive a blessing and to be remembered in his prayers. He followed a strict fast and was very devoted to the Blessed Sacrament. When his superiors occasionally asked him to administer the sacraments to nearby villages, Sharbel did so gladly.

Youssef Antoun Makhlou was born on May 8, 1828, one of five children, in the mountain village of Bekaa Kafra, the highest by elevation in Lebanon. Makhlou was a hermit who died in 1898 canonized in 1977 as Saint Charbel, revered for his healing miracles among Lebanon's Christians. Some have turned to taking soil from Saint Charbel's grave, boiling it, then drinking it as an alternative to medical treatment

Alice Fordham, in the piece titled In Lebanon, Some Turn To Beloved Local Saint For Solace And Protection From COVID-19, writes that
"In a country where a financial crisis has left health care threadbare and unreliable, many have begun turning to the saint to ward off the coronavirus."

Saint Charbel died in the late afternoon on Christmas Eve. Christians and non-Christians soon made his tomb a place of pilgrimage and of cures. Pope Paul VI beatified Sharbel in 1965, and canonized him 12 years later.

Prayer to Saint Charbel:

O Lord infinitely glorified by His Saints, You who fascinated the heart of Saint Charbel who chose the hermit life, granting him the grace and the power of being away from world keeping firm to his monastic virtues of chastity, obedience and poverty, we ask You to give us the grace of loving You and serving You as he did.

O mighty God, You who spread the power of Saint Charbel’s intercession through the multiple miracles and marvels, provide us, through his intercession, with the grace to which we aim. Amen.