Saint Sharbel’s Way to Heaven
By Fr. George El-Andari
Early Life
Youssef Antoun Makhlouf was born on May 8, 1828 in Bkaa Kafra, the highest village in Lebanon and in the Middle East, with altitude ranging from 1500 to 2700 meters. During the same year, the Monastery of Saint Maron was inaugurated at Annaya where, one day, it would open its doors to this child who would become Father Sharbel Makhlouf. Youssef’s father, Antoun Makhlouf, and his mother, Brigitta Chidiac, had five children, and Youssef was the youngest among them. His family was a devout family that fed themselves spiritually consistently through prayers, liturgy, and obeying God and thanking God at all times.
When Youssef was 3, his father died after compulsory enlistment for the Ottoman Empire. His mother Brigitta remarried a man who became the parish priest of Bkaa Kafra. As a child, Youssef helped his family, taking care of animals that helped the family eat and survive. While he was at the field doing his work, he found a neighboring grotto, and he made it a place of prayer for himself. He placed a statue of Mother Mary in it and spent hours praying with lit candles and burned incense. For this, Youssef’s comrades mocked him, calling him a Saint because of his great piety. To this day, the grotto he would visit bears the name, "the Saint's Grotto." Youssef took pleasure in serving Mass every morning, and he had great desires for God knowing that the world could promise him nothing. He had a yearning for a more perfect life than that of a simple Christian.
Youssef was educated at school and in nature. The teaching program in his village was very simple at that time, and he learned to read and write. He had two maternal uncles, Father Augustine and Father Daniel Chidiac from Bsharry, who lived in total seclusion and silence in the monastery of the Holy Valley of Qadisha. They had a decisive influence on Youssef’s faith. Youssef had visited them, taking part in their prayers and chants, serving them at Mass, and admiring their original way of life. He listened to their wise counsel and instruction on the history of monasticism. Youssef no longer heard but this one voice: "Come and follow Me."
Vocation
One morning in 1851, at the age of twenty-three, without his mother’s last hug and with no final goodbye from his brothers and sisters, Youssef headed toward the monastery of Our Lady of Mayfook, one of the most beautiful monasteries in the Maronite Lebanese Order. There, Youssef entered the novitiate.
A year later, Youssef was transferred to the Monastery of Saint Maron at Annaya, which was part of the Lebanese Maronite Order. Here, he continued his novitiate until 1853, when he took his vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience and chose the name “Sharbel.” His vocation was soon to be tested, as his mother and other relatives agreed that he should return home to his family in Bkaa Kafra. They begged him to leave the monastery, but at age twenty-six, Sharbel became a monk and firmly persevered in his vocation.
Sharbel’s superiors decided to send him to the Monastery of Kfifan. He continued to study theological subjects under Father Nimatullah Al-Hardini, who also became a Maronite Saint. In 1859, at age thirty-one, Sharbel was ordained a priest. After his ordination, Sharbel was sent back to the Monastery of Saint Maron in Annaya. He spent 16 years there, praying and working in the field with his brother monks. He was known for his humility and fidelity to his duty.
After hearing God’s call to a greater life of solitude and prayer, Sharbel began life in the hermitage of Saints Peter and Paul on February 15, 1875 with his superiors’ approval. For twenty-three years, he gave himself in total dedication to God as a hermit. He lived the life of virtues like an angel and was heroic through perfect poverty, obedience, and chastity—the three vows necessary to enter the ascetic way of life:
Poverty
According to monastic rules, the monastic way of life is not only to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ but also to abandon all monetary gain, accumulated possessions, and physical inheritance to follow the Lord. As mentioned previously, Saint Sharbel did not hear any other voice but “come and follow the Lord.” Father Sharbel never looked at or touched, if possible, money, silver, or gold. He thought of worldly possessions as dust to be stepped on. He used man-made or earthly materials and never threw anything of value away. He was very poor in the food he ate; he slept on the ground, covered himself with sheets that would poke him all night, and wore the same old clothes for many years to observe his vow of poverty.
Father Sharbel, however, was wealthy in terms of the divine gifts and of the highest virtues. His teachers were amazed by his intelligence, but he never showed it in words or in his own writings. He never claimed anything to be his or to belong to us. He renounced himself when a companion would ask him to leave a task for another, obeying immediately. Father Sharbel’s actions were always directed toward God, and his heart was never attached to earthly things but to divine only. He prayed for the poor and avoided laziness to stay close to God and away from the evil one’s traps.
Father Sharbel thought that money was a way for the devil to tempt monks, so he never accepted money for his prayers or blessing. If people insisted, he would accept but keep it away from himself. He always asked people to give it to his superiors, and he always received more than other monks for services, but he never knew.
Father Sharbel always dressed as the lowliest of the poor and the least among his brothers. He never wore new habit. He wore a faded habit but always kept it clean and patched. He wore the same habit in the summer and in the winter, in the heat and in the cold. Saint Sharbel lived his vow of poverty, but he loved both the poor and the rich people. He helped the poor, sick, cold and sufferers not only spiritually but also physically. When someone would come to him in need of his help, he would warm them up and give them his own food to eat.
Obedience
Obedience has a direct role in salvation and is deeply important in monastic life, which is evident throughout Holy Scripture as well as in the writings of the early Church fathers. Father Sharbel never did anything on his own initiative but only in obedience to the authorities above him, which represented God, as he believed that a monk must consider his superior as Christ. His obedience was always out of wisdom, piety, and virtue; it was never out of lack of good sense, weak judgment, or unthinking habit. He embodied this vow all his life as a vow of virtue. He saw respect for authority as respect for God. If his superior called him for any reason, he would immediately abandon his task and obey without delay. Once, he was tilling the ground with a pickaxe, and he was called out. He stopped the pickaxe in the air to hear the call and obey the request. Then, he put it down after he was asked to come for lunch.
He also saw respect for the rituals of the Church and its holy rites as respect for God. Whatever happened in the Church, Sharbel never turned right or left. Once, there was a fire in the hermitage chapel due to a lightning strike. The altar cloth and part of Sharbel’s clothes were burning. Other monks came over from next door due to the smell, but Saint Sharbel must have been in ecstasy praying, for he didn’t stop or seem to notice.
Sharbel saw respect for time was also respect for God as well. Sharbel always fulfilled his duties in a timely manner. He also received all orders with joy and happiness. He never declined any task or order for any reason, even if it would seem reasonable to everyone to ignore or deny an order. Whether it was from his superiors or his brother monks, Sharbel always waited or continued his work until he took orders from his companions. Even if the request seemed unreasonable or like a joke, he would still obey. Once, he realized that monks were short of firewood, so he asked his superior where would he wished him to get the wood from. Jokingly, his superior told him from the top of a hill that was three hours away on foot. Saint Sharbel went to the top of that hill and came back carrying the wood after a long time. When asked why it took him so long, he answered, “I went to the place you told me to go and get the wood.” His superior asked him, “why would you go there when the hermitage is surrounded by wood?” He answered, “you commanded, and I obeyed.”
Chastity
Father Sharbel had an angelic chastity that showed through his prolonged fasting, strong self discipline, mortifications, and prayers to stay in union with God. These practices helped keep him out of any struggle against evil. Many people described his life not as the life of a human being but rather as a life of an earthly angel who mortified his human nature. He carefully kept watch over his senses. He devoted himself fully to the Creator.
Sharbel’s hood was kept continuously over his head, and he did not raise his eyes toward another person’s face but always kept them fixed toward the ground. Even with his brother monks, he would speak shortly and lower his eyes. Just as if he were in a meditative state, he would walk by and refuse to look at a woman, as a monk must completely suppress his senses. If he encountered any woman while heading out of the hermitage for any reason, Father Sharbel would immediately change his path. Women in the neighborhood knew to change their path if they saw him approaching. If Sharbel was required to visit the sick, the women of the household were to stay out of his view. If women came to the hermitage to get holy water or other services, Sharbel often used the masculine gender to call them from the window. He would do the same thing when his mother, sister and niece visited him. He never saw his mother’s face after he became a monk. When women came to hear Mass, they had to stay outside, and when he blessed them, he would stretch his hand out of the window and bless them.
Father Sharbel compared the body to a donkey: “if you satiate it, it will become ungrateful, and if you starve it, it will cringe.” It was reported once that Father Sharbel was screaming for assistance, and one of the brothers in the nearby field heard him. He ran to him to offer help, and Father Sharbel claimed that he was fine. He did it again, and the same brother came running to him. Father Sharbel told him calmly in a low voice: “a temptation had harassed me. Forgive me and pray for me.” It is not a surprise that a demon tempts a monk, priest, or hermit if Christ himself was tempted in the desert.
Canonization
Saint Sharbel was open to the mission of the triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The center of his day was the liturgy; he would prepare for hours before Mass and give thanks for hours after Mass. He had a strong devotion to our Virgin Mother Mary. He died on Christmas Eve, 1898 as a result of a stroke, and in response, his superior, Father Antonius Mishimshany, 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 miraculous phenomenon occurred: a bright light was seen surrounding his tomb. A few months later, his tomb was opened, and his body was incorrupt with no signs of decay. Many miraculous healings and divine interventions were reported by those who sought his intercession. Hundreds of miracles were performed through Saint Sharbel by the power of the Holy Spirit when he was still alive as a monk-priest and hermit. Accumulations of stories of his faithful life and a Vatican-investigated and approved miracle led to his beatification’s approval. Pope Pius XII signed this approval on April 2, 1954, and on December 5, 1965, Pope Paul VI presided over Sharbel’s beatification at the conclusion of the Second Vatican council.
Subsequently, On October 9, 1977, Saint Sharbel was canonized by the same Pope (Paul VI), who said of him: “He makes us understand, in this world largely fascinated by wealth and comfort, the paramount value of poverty, penance, and asceticism to liberate the soul in its ascent to God.” After his death, St. Sharbel performed over thirty thousand reported miracles around the world, interceding for the sick from various religions including Christians, Muslims, Druze, Jews, Buddhists, and atheists. Saint Sharbel is one of those Saints through whom God chose to reveal himself, using the power of prayer, love, and healing. Let us renew our faith in God and strengthen it through our own prayers to Him so we may spread love to our broken world. Through God’s help with Saint Sharbel’s intercession, may the world find healing.
Youssef Antoun Makhlouf was born on May 8, 1828 in Bkaa Kafra, the highest village in Lebanon and in the Middle East, with altitude ranging from 1500 to 2700 meters. During the same year, the Monastery of Saint Maron was inaugurated at Annaya where, one day, it would open its doors to this child who would become Father Sharbel Makhlouf. Youssef’s father, Antoun Makhlouf, and his mother, Brigitta Chidiac, had five children, and Youssef was the youngest among them. His family was a devout family that fed themselves spiritually consistently through prayers, liturgy, and obeying God and thanking God at all times.
When Youssef was 3, his father died after compulsory enlistment for the Ottoman Empire. His mother Brigitta remarried a man who became the parish priest of Bkaa Kafra. As a child, Youssef helped his family, taking care of animals that helped the family eat and survive. While he was at the field doing his work, he found a neighboring grotto, and he made it a place of prayer for himself. He placed a statue of Mother Mary in it and spent hours praying with lit candles and burned incense. For this, Youssef’s comrades mocked him, calling him a Saint because of his great piety. To this day, the grotto he would visit bears the name, "the Saint's Grotto." Youssef took pleasure in serving Mass every morning, and he had great desires for God knowing that the world could promise him nothing. He had a yearning for a more perfect life than that of a simple Christian.
Youssef was educated at school and in nature. The teaching program in his village was very simple at that time, and he learned to read and write. He had two maternal uncles, Father Augustine and Father Daniel Chidiac from Bsharry, who lived in total seclusion and silence in the monastery of the Holy Valley of Qadisha. They had a decisive influence on Youssef’s faith. Youssef had visited them, taking part in their prayers and chants, serving them at Mass, and admiring their original way of life. He listened to their wise counsel and instruction on the history of monasticism. Youssef no longer heard but this one voice: "Come and follow Me."
Vocation
One morning in 1851, at the age of twenty-three, without his mother’s last hug and with no final goodbye from his brothers and sisters, Youssef headed toward the monastery of Our Lady of Mayfook, one of the most beautiful monasteries in the Maronite Lebanese Order. There, Youssef entered the novitiate.
A year later, Youssef was transferred to the Monastery of Saint Maron at Annaya, which was part of the Lebanese Maronite Order. Here, he continued his novitiate until 1853, when he took his vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience and chose the name “Sharbel.” His vocation was soon to be tested, as his mother and other relatives agreed that he should return home to his family in Bkaa Kafra. They begged him to leave the monastery, but at age twenty-six, Sharbel became a monk and firmly persevered in his vocation.
Sharbel’s superiors decided to send him to the Monastery of Kfifan. He continued to study theological subjects under Father Nimatullah Al-Hardini, who also became a Maronite Saint. In 1859, at age thirty-one, Sharbel was ordained a priest. After his ordination, Sharbel was sent back to the Monastery of Saint Maron in Annaya. He spent 16 years there, praying and working in the field with his brother monks. He was known for his humility and fidelity to his duty.
After hearing God’s call to a greater life of solitude and prayer, Sharbel began life in the hermitage of Saints Peter and Paul on February 15, 1875 with his superiors’ approval. For twenty-three years, he gave himself in total dedication to God as a hermit. He lived the life of virtues like an angel and was heroic through perfect poverty, obedience, and chastity—the three vows necessary to enter the ascetic way of life:
Poverty
According to monastic rules, the monastic way of life is not only to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ but also to abandon all monetary gain, accumulated possessions, and physical inheritance to follow the Lord. As mentioned previously, Saint Sharbel did not hear any other voice but “come and follow the Lord.” Father Sharbel never looked at or touched, if possible, money, silver, or gold. He thought of worldly possessions as dust to be stepped on. He used man-made or earthly materials and never threw anything of value away. He was very poor in the food he ate; he slept on the ground, covered himself with sheets that would poke him all night, and wore the same old clothes for many years to observe his vow of poverty.
Father Sharbel, however, was wealthy in terms of the divine gifts and of the highest virtues. His teachers were amazed by his intelligence, but he never showed it in words or in his own writings. He never claimed anything to be his or to belong to us. He renounced himself when a companion would ask him to leave a task for another, obeying immediately. Father Sharbel’s actions were always directed toward God, and his heart was never attached to earthly things but to divine only. He prayed for the poor and avoided laziness to stay close to God and away from the evil one’s traps.
Father Sharbel thought that money was a way for the devil to tempt monks, so he never accepted money for his prayers or blessing. If people insisted, he would accept but keep it away from himself. He always asked people to give it to his superiors, and he always received more than other monks for services, but he never knew.
Father Sharbel always dressed as the lowliest of the poor and the least among his brothers. He never wore new habit. He wore a faded habit but always kept it clean and patched. He wore the same habit in the summer and in the winter, in the heat and in the cold. Saint Sharbel lived his vow of poverty, but he loved both the poor and the rich people. He helped the poor, sick, cold and sufferers not only spiritually but also physically. When someone would come to him in need of his help, he would warm them up and give them his own food to eat.
Obedience
Obedience has a direct role in salvation and is deeply important in monastic life, which is evident throughout Holy Scripture as well as in the writings of the early Church fathers. Father Sharbel never did anything on his own initiative but only in obedience to the authorities above him, which represented God, as he believed that a monk must consider his superior as Christ. His obedience was always out of wisdom, piety, and virtue; it was never out of lack of good sense, weak judgment, or unthinking habit. He embodied this vow all his life as a vow of virtue. He saw respect for authority as respect for God. If his superior called him for any reason, he would immediately abandon his task and obey without delay. Once, he was tilling the ground with a pickaxe, and he was called out. He stopped the pickaxe in the air to hear the call and obey the request. Then, he put it down after he was asked to come for lunch.
He also saw respect for the rituals of the Church and its holy rites as respect for God. Whatever happened in the Church, Sharbel never turned right or left. Once, there was a fire in the hermitage chapel due to a lightning strike. The altar cloth and part of Sharbel’s clothes were burning. Other monks came over from next door due to the smell, but Saint Sharbel must have been in ecstasy praying, for he didn’t stop or seem to notice.
Sharbel saw respect for time was also respect for God as well. Sharbel always fulfilled his duties in a timely manner. He also received all orders with joy and happiness. He never declined any task or order for any reason, even if it would seem reasonable to everyone to ignore or deny an order. Whether it was from his superiors or his brother monks, Sharbel always waited or continued his work until he took orders from his companions. Even if the request seemed unreasonable or like a joke, he would still obey. Once, he realized that monks were short of firewood, so he asked his superior where would he wished him to get the wood from. Jokingly, his superior told him from the top of a hill that was three hours away on foot. Saint Sharbel went to the top of that hill and came back carrying the wood after a long time. When asked why it took him so long, he answered, “I went to the place you told me to go and get the wood.” His superior asked him, “why would you go there when the hermitage is surrounded by wood?” He answered, “you commanded, and I obeyed.”
Chastity
Father Sharbel had an angelic chastity that showed through his prolonged fasting, strong self discipline, mortifications, and prayers to stay in union with God. These practices helped keep him out of any struggle against evil. Many people described his life not as the life of a human being but rather as a life of an earthly angel who mortified his human nature. He carefully kept watch over his senses. He devoted himself fully to the Creator.
Sharbel’s hood was kept continuously over his head, and he did not raise his eyes toward another person’s face but always kept them fixed toward the ground. Even with his brother monks, he would speak shortly and lower his eyes. Just as if he were in a meditative state, he would walk by and refuse to look at a woman, as a monk must completely suppress his senses. If he encountered any woman while heading out of the hermitage for any reason, Father Sharbel would immediately change his path. Women in the neighborhood knew to change their path if they saw him approaching. If Sharbel was required to visit the sick, the women of the household were to stay out of his view. If women came to the hermitage to get holy water or other services, Sharbel often used the masculine gender to call them from the window. He would do the same thing when his mother, sister and niece visited him. He never saw his mother’s face after he became a monk. When women came to hear Mass, they had to stay outside, and when he blessed them, he would stretch his hand out of the window and bless them.
Father Sharbel compared the body to a donkey: “if you satiate it, it will become ungrateful, and if you starve it, it will cringe.” It was reported once that Father Sharbel was screaming for assistance, and one of the brothers in the nearby field heard him. He ran to him to offer help, and Father Sharbel claimed that he was fine. He did it again, and the same brother came running to him. Father Sharbel told him calmly in a low voice: “a temptation had harassed me. Forgive me and pray for me.” It is not a surprise that a demon tempts a monk, priest, or hermit if Christ himself was tempted in the desert.
Canonization
Saint Sharbel was open to the mission of the triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The center of his day was the liturgy; he would prepare for hours before Mass and give thanks for hours after Mass. He had a strong devotion to our Virgin Mother Mary. He died on Christmas Eve, 1898 as a result of a stroke, and in response, his superior, Father Antonius Mishimshany, 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 miraculous phenomenon occurred: a bright light was seen surrounding his tomb. A few months later, his tomb was opened, and his body was incorrupt with no signs of decay. Many miraculous healings and divine interventions were reported by those who sought his intercession. Hundreds of miracles were performed through Saint Sharbel by the power of the Holy Spirit when he was still alive as a monk-priest and hermit. Accumulations of stories of his faithful life and a Vatican-investigated and approved miracle led to his beatification’s approval. Pope Pius XII signed this approval on April 2, 1954, and on December 5, 1965, Pope Paul VI presided over Sharbel’s beatification at the conclusion of the Second Vatican council.
Subsequently, On October 9, 1977, Saint Sharbel was canonized by the same Pope (Paul VI), who said of him: “He makes us understand, in this world largely fascinated by wealth and comfort, the paramount value of poverty, penance, and asceticism to liberate the soul in its ascent to God.” After his death, St. Sharbel performed over thirty thousand reported miracles around the world, interceding for the sick from various religions including Christians, Muslims, Druze, Jews, Buddhists, and atheists. Saint Sharbel is one of those Saints through whom God chose to reveal himself, using the power of prayer, love, and healing. Let us renew our faith in God and strengthen it through our own prayers to Him so we may spread love to our broken world. Through God’s help with Saint Sharbel’s intercession, may the world find healing.
