Saint Charbel’s Holy Hidden Life

God often works through hidden ways, and those who live a hidden life. Amare nesciri, Saint Philip Neri was wont to say, ‘love to be unknown‘. Behind the noise of the world, the saints are sowing the seeds of the kingdom, and one of the most ‘invisible’ of them all was the priest-hermit Saint Charbel Maklouf (+1898) whose life was an icon of ascetic, chaste, humble, monastic sanctity, spent in a desert monastery in Lebanon, praying and sacrificing for the world and for souls.  Saint Charbel’s devoted himself completely to God from his early youth, and this sacrifice proved fruitful far beyond what our limited senses can tell us, the ‘hundred fold’ of which Christ speaks in the Gospel.

As today’s Office of Readings has it:

You also know, my dear brethren, that ever since the transgression came to pass, the soul cannot know God unless it withdraws itself from men and from every distraction. For then the soul will see the adversary who fights against it. And once it has seen the adversary, and has overcome him every time he engages it in battle, then God dwells in that soul, and all the labour is changed to joy and gladness. But if the soul is overcome, then there come upon it grief, boredom, and many other kinds of heaviness.

The world is immersed in such ‘grief, boredom and many other kinds of heaviness’.

For do not suppose that because the righteous were in the midst of men it was among men that they had achieved their righteousness. Rather, having first practised much quiet, they then received the power of God dwelling in them, and then God sent them into the midst of men, having acquired every virtue, so that they might act as God’s provisioners and cure men of their infirmities.

We need more such Saint Charbels, to cure us of our infirmities, and make us see what we do not see, and hear what we do not hear.

Saint Charbel spent 23 years in eremitical solitude, before dying on Christmas Eve, two years before the turn of the twentieth century that would see the world change dramatically, with war, conflict, genocide and the rise of global totalitarian regimes, whose shadows still haunt us. Technologies were invented that not only drew men away from God, but made our own self-destruction possible.

Their buildings rise, their morality sinks. Their worldly goods increase, their values diminish. Their speeches multiply, their prayers grow scarce…. An edifice based on man may well rise, but it ends up crushing him.

Saint Charbel did not allow this to perturb him, in his life completely immersed in God, not the world. His body was buried without a coffin or embalming, yet was found incorrupt months afterward his death, and again decades after that (his tomb was last opened in 1955). There were reports of a bright light shining above his tomb, which did not abate, and miracles have never stopped. Saint Charbel is known as the ‘wonder worker of Lebanon’. For regardless of how much happens, good and bad, the Cross – the truth and love – of Christ stands forever. He was canonized by Pope Paul VI on October 8th, 1977.

Saint Charbel was known for bringing peace between Muslims and Christians. The two religions may be incompatible, but individual persons and communities may find, and have found, common ground of co-existence.

Yet this is also the vigil of Saint James, the Greater, known for his help in the defense of Christendom, and his intercession on behalf of the Catholic Crusaders. As the saying goes, si vis pacem, para bellum – if you want peace, prepare for war. And we are in a spiritual battle: cathedrals and churches burning, and martyrs being made; things are far from peaceful.

But our battle is not primarily of this world. As Saint Paul warns: For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. (Eph 6:12)

Hence, peace also arrives, and arrives more assuredly, by prayer, with a life offered up to God in reparation and repentance, the whole notion of metanoia and the Magdalene. For one truly converted soul can in turn convert the world once again to the true, revealed religion, the worship of Holy Wisdom Himself.

Saint Charbel saw the importance of the family, and all the forces of evil arrayed against this divinely instituted society:

The family is the basis of the Lord’s plan; and all forces of evil are focusing all their evil on destroying the family because they know that by destroying the family, the foundations of the plan of God will be shaken. The war of the Evil One against the Lord is his war against the family, and the war of the Evil One against the family is the core of his war against the Lord. Because the family is the image of God, from the beginning of the creation of this universe, The Evil one is focusing on destroying the family, the foundation of God’s plan.

His advice to those called to family life:

Guard your families and keep them from the schemes of the evil one through the presence of God in them. Protect and keep them through prayer and dialog, through mutual understanding and forgiveness, through honesty and faithfulness, and most importantly, through listening. Listen to one another with your ears, eyes, hearts, mouths and the palms of your hands, and keep the roaring of the noise of the world away from your homes because it is like raging storms and violent waves; once it enters the home, it will sweep away everything and disperse everyone. Preserve the warmth of the family, because the warmth of the whole world cannot make up for it.

I will leave you for now with a final word from the Office:

Show yourselves strong in what you do. Those who depart from quiet are unable to conquer their passions or to fight against their adversary, because they are subjected to their passions. But in your case, you overcome the passions, and the power of God is with you.

Saint Charbel Maklouf, ora pro nobis!