Saint Charbel Makhlouf

He was born on May 8, 1828, in the village Franciscan Media calls Beka-Kafra and Paul VI's homily, in its French text, Gégà-Kafra. ¹² The two sources give his name differently too. Paul VI says his baptismal name was Youssef; Franciscan Media calls him Joseph Zaroun Maklouf. ¹² His father, a mule driver, died when the boy was three, and an uncle raised him. ²

Paul VI dwelt on that household when he canonized him. He described a family of modest peasants, hardworking and close, of sturdy faith, at home in the village's liturgical prayer and devoted to Mary; uncles who had given themselves to the life of hermits; and above all a mother, pious and so given to penance that she fasted continually. ¹ The pope quoted words reported of her after her son had left home, which are translated here from the French: "If you were not going to be a good religious, I would tell you, come back home. But I know now that the Lord wants you in his service. And in my sorrow at being parted from you, I say to him, resigned: may he bless you, my child, and make you a saint." ¹

At twenty-three he left his village and his family, and, in Paul VI's words, never went back. ¹² He entered the Lebanese Maronite Order of Saint Anthony and took the name Sharbel, which Franciscan Media says was in honor of a second-century martyr. ¹²

Where he began is told two ways. Franciscan Media says he joined the Monastery of Saint Maron at Annaya. ² Paul VI's homily places his novitiate first at the monastery of Our Lady of Mayfouk, and only then at the more remote Saint Maron of Annaya. ¹ The homily adds that after his solemn profession he studied theology at Saint Cyprian of Kfifane. ¹ Franciscan Media dates his final vows to 1853, and both sources agree that he was ordained a priest in 1859. ¹²

He then lived sixteen years in community among the monks of Annaya. ¹

In 1875 he went to live as a hermit, following, Franciscan Media says, the example of the fifth-century Saint Maron. ² The hermitage was dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul and belonged to Annaya, and he stayed there twenty-three years, until his death. ¹²

Paul VI summed up the life in the three vows, kept to the extreme. Poverty, in his lodging, his clothing and a single frugal meal a day, with hard manual work in the harsh mountain climate. A chastity he guarded with what the pope called a legendary strictness. And obedience, total, to his superiors, to his fellow monks as well, and to the rule of the hermits. ¹ At the center of it the pope put an almost unbroken conversation with the Lord, a fervent celebration of the Mass, and penance joined to intercession for sinners. ¹ Franciscan Media adds that he kept a strict fast and was very devoted to the Blessed Sacrament, and that when his superiors sometimes asked him to bring the sacraments to the nearby villages, he went gladly. ²

He was not hidden from his neighbors. People came to him for a blessing and to be remembered in his prayers. ² Even in his lifetime, Paul VI said, his compatriots, Christian or not, venerated him and ran to him as to a physician of souls and bodies. ¹ He died at the hermitage on Christmas Eve, 1898, at the age of seventy; Franciscan Media says it was late in the afternoon. ¹²

Paul VI did not pretend that this kind of holiness is easy to like. He said openly that it leaves the modern world perplexed, even irritated, and that Christians themselves might ask whether Christ, whose own life was so welcoming, really demanded such renunciation. ¹ Some, he said, would go further and suspect such austerity, in the name of psychology, of contempt for the body, for love, for friendship and for creative freedom. ¹

His answer was that this misreads the life as a human performance. Christ himself made demands just as abrupt, the pope said, citing his words in Luke about leaving the dead to bury their dead and preferring him to father, mother and one's own life. ¹ For the monk, austerity was a means. What it made room for, Paul VI said, was a sovereign freedom before difficulties and passions, a deep inner life and prayer, adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, a son's tenderness toward the Virgin, and the fruits of the Beatitudes: gentleness, humility, mercy, peace and joy. ¹

He also spoke to Lebanon. The country, he said, had been marked by the turmoil of recent events, and he called Charbel a paradoxical worker for peace, because he had sought it apart from the world, in God alone. ¹

Paul VI beatified him on December 5, 1965, as the Second Vatican Council was closing, and canonized him on October 9, 1977, extending his veneration to the whole Church. ¹² The pope presented him to the world as "this valiant monk, glory of the Lebanese Maronite Order and worthy representative of the Churches of the East and their high monastic tradition", words translated here from the French. ¹

After his death, Franciscan Media says, Christians and non-Christians soon made his tomb "a place of pilgrimage and of cures." ² On December 1, 2025, Pope Leo XIV came to Annaya as a pilgrim and prayed there. ³ He spoke of "this man who wrote nothing, who lived a hidden and silent life, yet whose fame spread throughout the world", and said that after his death his work "multiplied and became like a river of mercy." ³ On the twenty-second of every month, Leo XIV said, thousands of pilgrims from different countries come to Annaya to spend a day in prayer. ³ He brought the monastery a lamp as a gift, as a symbol, he said, of the light God had kindled there through Saint Charbel. ³

None of the sources consulted for this page names a patronage for Saint Charbel, so none is given here. ¹²³ What both popes did was entrust Lebanon to him. Paul VI closed his homily asking him to intercede for the Lebanese Maronite Order, for the whole Maronite Church and for the country of Lebanon, to help it overcome its difficulties and heal its wounds. ¹ Leo XIV, at the tomb, entrusted "Lebanon and its people to the protection of Saint Charbel." ³

Saint Charbel's feast is kept on July 24. ² In the calendar of the dioceses of the United States it is an optional memorial, entered as "Saint Sharbel Makhlūf, Priest". ⁴ It is not the anniversary of his death, which fell on Christmas Eve. ¹²

Leo XIV said the Holy Spirit formed Charbel to teach "those who live without God how to pray, those who live immersed in noise how to be silent, those who live ostentatiously how to be modest, and those who seek riches how to be poor." ³ He called all of it counter-cultural, and said that is exactly why it attracts. ³

Paul VI was careful to say that the life of a hermit is not offered to everyone as something to copy. ¹ What it shows in a pure state, he said, is a spirit no follower of Christ is excused from: that God is worth adoring and loving for his own sake. ¹ Most people who pray to Saint Charbel will never live on a mountain or eat once a day, and are not asked to.

His mother let him go, and said so in words that do not hide what it cost her. ¹ Her son never went home again. ¹² Whatever the hermitage gave him, part of the price was paid by a mother who asked God to make her son a saint in the same breath as she gave him up.

The man who went looking for silence ended up at the center of a crowd. Paul VI noted that people came to him in his lifetime, Christian or not, and Leo XIV that they still come by the thousand every month. ¹³ He did not set out to be found, and he was.