Saint Charbel Makhlouf
1828-1898
One of the Greatest Saints of Our Time
PART 8: DIVERSE MIRACLES
BY WAY of conclusion for this life, and the most prodigious life following his death, we will quote a few narrations of cures among thousands of others which were obtained by the intercession of Father Charbel Makhlouf. From April 22, 1950, until the end of 1953, 2,200 incidents were related in a registry held at the Convent of Saint Maro of Annaya.
By the intercession of the Saint, a sick person who was declared dead by four doctors was reanimated. Here is what Doctor E. Onaïssi declares to this effect, he being the very one who had examined the intact body of Father Charbel many and many a time:
"I was urgently called in for a sick person named Chaïkh S'alim El Hacham on February 3, 1952. I found him in danger of death, for he was laid out on his bed unconscious, livid, with a very irregular pulse and blood pressure lower than six-point, the pulsati on of his heart being almost imperceptible. I acted quickly by making use of all effective means, barring none. Chaïkh is a seventy-year-old man with a stomach ulcer that causes frequent hemorrhages. This time this loss of blood by vomiting was more than a liter's worth. Ever since my arrival in less than an hour, despite my efforts, the sick man vomited twice and his state grew worse. I called my colleagues Doctor Chami, Doctor Anthony Mored and Doctor Chahïd El Khaoury. After having exhausted medial resources in vain to save Chaïkh, all four of us concluded that his cure was impossible. Doctor Mored returned to Beirut, saying that the sick man would die within a half hour. In fact, the heart of the sick man was beating no longer, and Doctor Chami announced his death and left the room, My daughter Linda entered at that moment. She burned a little incense brought from Father Charbel's tomb and held it near the nose of the sick man, posing a relic of Father Charbel upon his chest. Then Mr. Anthony Sakhr made a subcutaneous injection with holy water of Father Charbel. Chaïkh came back to life, and since that day his health has so improved that he is regarded as completely cured. "That is why I, the undersigned, Doctor Onaïssi, attest and affirm that the cure of Chaïkh El Hacham is due to a Divine miracle by the intercession of the Servant of God, Charbel Makhlouf. I declare this according to my conscience and knowledge, swearing by God Almighty that what I am saying is the entire truth.
February 16, 1952. (Signed) Doctor E. Onaïssi
Giles Phabreey relates the extraordinary cure of an eighteen-month-old child who was frightfully burned on the hands from falling on a red-hot stove: "All hope of cure was abandoned," he wrote, "and the greatest practitioners of France and America could only envisage one solution-----to attenuate the horror of the appearance by a human graft. This took place at the beginning of 1951, not in Lebanon but in Paris. His mother thought of Charbel a few days before the operation and placed a relic of the monk upon her child and prayed to him with all her soul. This was evidently a dead-end case according to science, since the flesh was burned to the third degree. No matter. It was a poor, mutilated human being who was suffering and crying, and desperate if he did survive. Never did a more ardent prayer rise up to God. "Now, on the date the child was brought to the clinic, people noticed with amazement that he was smiling. A reflection from Heaven seemed to have passed into his eyes, and when the doctors were ready to undertake their difficult task, they undid the bandages and saw with amazement that both hands, which had been so atrociously mutilated and which according to them should only have been left as stumps or claws, had taken back their human form. All medical intervention had become superfluous. This was much more than a "cure"! "I went to the parents' home myself to see the child of the miracle. His two little hands were intact and rosy. 'You see,' the mother told me, "in the hollow of his right hand there is a scarcely visible little red trace left. God has signed His work.' She then told me that one of her friends, who was a total non-believer, had told her: 'Let Charbel make the flesh of your child grow back and I will have the Faith.' She has kept her word."
What must one also say of the son of Nehne Harb of the village of Tannourim, a six-year-old child struck from birth with epilepsy and who, after having touched the tomb just once, was completely cured? We insist upon the age of this young sick person-six years old. The most skeptical of men will not say that it was done by auto-suggestion.
Miss Naba Jabbour Awad, sixteen years old, had been mute since the age of two following typhoid fever. On June 13, 1950, she visited the tomb of the monk Charbel and brought back a piece of wood coming from the oak of the hermitage, under which oak tree Father Charbel loved to converse with God. She made an infusion out of it, drank this infusion and was completely cured afterwards.
Here is the testimony of an eighty-year-old atheistic Druse, Emir Malik Erselam, brother of the Minister of Lebanon to Moscow, who attests to the cure of a twenty-four year old young girl whose right foot was three to four fingers shorter than the left foot from the time of her birth:
"I, the undersigned, Emir Malik Erselam, declare Hosn Mansour Al Mohaïar as having limped for a long time. After her visit to Father Charbel's tomb I saw her, for we were from the same village, walk normally. I was astonished and believed in the holiness of Father Charbel, though I did not believe in any religion at that time.
May 14, 1950. (Signed) Emir Malik Erselam"
According to the testimony of the miraculously cured person himself, here is a narration of a cure of a young twenty-five-year-old man, Akel Wakim, who for ten years had been suffering from the consequences of an accident which had left his leg stiff and six cm. shorter than the other one. Yet several doctors had cared for him. "There is no hope of your ever healing", one of them had told him. In 1950 he heard about the miracles of Father Charbel. On May 4 he left for Annaya, accompanied by his mother, his brother and his uncle. "I was full of faith and hope," he said. "I went into the room where Father Charbel's tomb was to be found and began to pray with fervor. My mother rubbed her hand over the tomb and then rubbed my lame leg." After having prayed for about a half-hour, the monks entered chanting a hymn to the Blessed Virgin. At that moment Akel Wakim felt strength return to his leg and was capable of moving it freely.
"When the monks had finished the procession with the image of the Blessed Virgin", he continued, "I arose and then knelt on my lame knee. I then felt the strength go up into the upper part of my leg and then into my hip, which I had not been able to move for ten years. My hands placed upon the tomb felt a kind of strong current. From that time on I was able to walk and jump like other people." Let us quote this testimony, too: "I, the undersigned, Mounir Taki Edine, General Director of the National Defense presiding at Beirut, declare and confess that Father Charbel is a Saint. May God make of him a good and a blessing for our dear Lebanon.
"My brother Nadim lost the use of his hearing in his right ear following an accident. Doctors Diabe and Olivar found the eardrum pierced and despaired for his cure. Luckily, my brother listened to the advice of his friends and left for Annaya to visit the tomb of Father Charbel, and then returned to Beirut. He hears normally ever since this visit.
"Let us retain the essential part of this fact-----since we were non-believers, this miracle took place among us so that we might obtain the Faith which we so need in this world. "In face of which I give my attestation. "June 10, 1950. (Signed) Mounir Taki Edine" It is impossible for us to mention here all of the cures obtained by the holy hermit. The sick people who were cured were of the most different sort-----blind, deaf, mute, paralytic, heart trouble, cancer, stomach sickness and ulcers, meningitis, tuberculosis, asthma, insanity, eczema, shingles and different deformities. They were cured in different ways-----some on the tomb and others at a distance, certain ones by prayer alone and others by a piece of cloth
which had touched the tomb of Father Charbel or a drop of the liquid that wells forth from his body. The people concerned were of different religions and from different countries. We must add to this that airplanes were miraculously saved from lightning, and boats in storms and affairs of grave difficulty.
To give you an idea of the number of cures, here are a few statistics. Over a period of four months, from April 22, 1950, to August 14 of the same year, three hundred and fifty cures, spread out as follows, were inscribed at the Convent of Annaya:
The blind---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------31
Deaf and dumb------------------------------------------------------------------------------37
Cripples and paralytics-----------------------------------------------------------------163
Diverse (reputed to be incurable)-------------------------------------------------119
The figures mentioned above include twenty Moslems. Finally, since the death of the Servant of God, Saint Charbel Makhlouf, the Monastery has been invaded; day and night, human waves unfold upon it as if they were landing in a true harbor of salvation! People touch the tomb. Liturgical prayers rise up to Heaven without interruption. Returns to God are numerous among this crowd which prays and implores for the healing of the body and that of the soul. Day and night, priests dispense the Sacraments of Penance and Eucharist. As we have said, the sick are of different sorts and the greatest infirmities find appeasement and cure there. All demand relics, and when they don't receive any, they pick up a bit of earth from the courtyard of the Monastery near the tomb and return home with the same joy as if they had brought off a treasure. In "La Vie Spirituelle" of April, 1951, we read an article on Charbel Makhlouf of which this is one of the passages:
"The conversions of souls are numerous and still more precious than the cures of bodies. They have even registered cases of non-Christians who professed their faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ in a loud voice and have publicly asked for Baptism in His name. A religious breath of amplitude and of a quality unknown till then seems to have passed-----and perhaps more than passed-----upon Lebanon and the Middle East. The Monastery of Saint Maro has become a public scene where Christians, Moslems and it even seems Jews (and most probably others also, for this part of the world is a kind of crossroads of time and space and includes men of all confessions and religions) meet and which at least to our knowledge has no precedent in the history of the Church."
Father of Truth
[The last Prayer of the Saint before he died.]
| Father
of truth, Here is Thy Son, The sacrifice in which Thou art well pleased. Accept Him for He died for me. So through Him I shall be pardoned. Here is the offering. Take it from my hands And so I shall be reconciled with Thee. Remember not the sins that I have committed In front of Thy Majesty. Here is the blood which flowered on Golgotha For my salvation and prays for me. Out of consideration for this, Accept my supplication. I have committed many sins But Thy mercy is great. If Thou wilt put them in the balance, |
Thy
goodness will have more weight Than the most mighty mountains. Look not upon my sins, But rather on what is offered for them, For the offering and the sacrifice Are even greater than the offenses. Because I have sinned, Thy Beloved bore the nails and the spear. His sufferings are enough to satisfy Thee. By them I shall live. Glory be to the Father Who sent His Son for us. Adoration be to the Son Who has freed us and ensured our salvation. Blessed be He who by His love has given life to all. To Him be the glory. |
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