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Just a block from Saks Fifth Avenue, where window shoppers eye diamond necklaces and designer handbags, there sits a small chapel dedicated to a man who gave up not only all worldly treasures, but any claim to power or self-centeredness. That man is St. Charbel Makhlouf (1828-1898), and his shrine lies inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.
Just over 125 years after his death, devotion to St. Charbel continues to grow, not just in Lebanon but all over the world. Born in a small mountain village in Lebanon, Youssef Makhlouf worked as a shepherd and prayed often to the Virgin Mary. At the age of 20, he entered a monastery of the Maronite rite, choosing the name of Charbel, a martyr who died under the Emperor Marcus Aurelius in 2nd-century Antioch.
Ordained a priest six year later, Fr. Charbel spent the remaining 44 years of his life in Maronite monasteries, dedicating himself to worship and prayer. He was known for his kindness, humility, deep prayer life, and attitude of obedience. Not long after his death on Christmas Eve in 1898, a light was seen emanating from his tomb. His body was later exhumed and was discovered to be incorrupt. (It remained so for the next 40 years). Pilgrims began flocking to Charbel’s tomb and there were healings reported. He was canonized in 1977. Today there are many chapels and churches dedicated to this great saint.
(See the PHOTO GALLERY at the end of this article for more images of the sacred spaces dedicated to St. Charbel, along with the pilgrims who travel to visit the saint.)
Pilgrims in New York City
The Chapel of St. Charbel Makhlouf at St. Patrick’s was dedicated in October 2017, in a ceremony presided over by the Cardinal of New York, Timothy Dolan, and by Béchara Bourtos Raï, the Maronite Patriarch of Antioch and all the East. Appropriately, the chapel is located next to the Lady Chapel at the back of the cathedral. Visitors to Our Lady often stop to say a prayer at St. Charbel’s chapel, asking for his intercession. It is a common sight to see young professionals kneeling in front of the first-class relic of St. Charbel set in the center of the shrine.
One such pilgrim is Tecla Paiusco. An Italian who moved to New York 12 years ago, Tecla discovered St. Charbel after her father gave her a book about the saint. She was touched by his holiness and in particular by accounts of his radical obedience. “I’m a person who has a lot of problems obeying,” Tecla told Aleteia. And so she began asking “to be humble like he was.”
For the past few years, Tecla has made a pilgrimage to visit St. Charbel’s chapel “whenever there is something big in my life that I need to pray for.” Leaving the Upper East Side apartment where she lives with her family, Tecla takes a two-hour walk through Central Park to the chapel. In recent years, she has been inviting a small group of friends to join her. They recently made the pilgrimage to pray for one of their friends who had been diagnosed with cancer.
Five times along the route the pilgrims stop to pray a decade of the Rosary and then listen to a short reading from the Gospel of John. Arriving at the shrine, they pray for St. Charbel’s intercession and thank him for accompanying them. “It is very beautiful,” Tecla says.
A monastery dedicated to St. Charbel in Rome
Around 6,885 km (4,278 miles) away from New York City, a church sits quietly between buildings at the crossroads of a busy intersection in eastern Rome. As soon as you walk through the door, the first thing you’ll notice is a statue of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, surrounded by shining mosaics, and an icon of St. Charbel Makhluf’s recognizable hooded figure and white beard, just below her.
The Church of Our Lady Immaculate and St. Benedict Joseph Labre is part of the Monastery of St. Charbel in Rome, and has become a center attracting pilgrims from all over Italy and Europe to venerate this Lebanese saint. This Monastery acts as a base for the Lebanese Maronite Order (OLM), part of the Maronite Church and the order of which St. Charbel was a member. Here the Order’s relations with the Holy See are headquartered, and the monastery hosts several priests from the order who come to Rome to study.
“Here in this house, I always say there is the Lord, Our Lady Immaculate, and St. Charbel – without them I don’t know what we would do,” Father Jad Kossaify, General procurator of the Lebanese Maronite Order to the Holy See, told Aleteia with a smile. Father Kossaify has been the general procurator, meaning the OLM representative in Rome and the head of the monastery, since 2022.
A very active saint
“Almost all of those who come to this church are Italian, I rarely see Lebanese people here. […] Some Lebanese do come obviously, but most are Italian. There are also many other Europeans, such as from Poland, Czech Republic, Spain, France, Germany, etc.” Father Kossaify explained.
He said many pilgrims come for the Mass that they celebrate for St. Charbel every 22nd day of the month.
In 1993, the intercession of St. Charbel was credited with healing a woman who had become paralyzed after having a stroke. He asked her to pray and have a Mass said at the Monastery of St. Maron in Annaya, Lebanon, where St. Charbel used to live and where his tomb is, every 22nd of the month. Since then many shrines and churches dedicated to the saint around the world also celebrate special liturgies on this day.
“St. Charbel is getting more and more well known; he is a saint that really does things his own way. He has his own way of reaching out to people,” Father Kossaify said. “Many people call the monastery to say that they saw this priest in their dreams and they wanted to know who he was, or they come here because he healed them from something and they found out that Rome has this monastery dedicated to him.”
“At the beginning, God forgive me, I thought people were saying these stories just to chit chat. But I have seen in these years many people coming from all over Europe to find this space dedicated to St. Charbel. He has his own way of bringing people to him,” Father Kossaify continued. “God is great.”
An interesting mosaic
Father Kossaify also believes that St. Charbel is the one who guided the OLM to this particular church and building in Rome in 2018. The OLM had been searching for a new space for their Monastery in Rome for a number of years, as the building they previously had was too small. The Sisters of the Immaculate were selling this building that had hosted their convent and the OLM bought it and then moved into it in 2019.
An interesting coincidence that Father Kossaify highlighted is that in the mosaics adorning the Church, which were made in the 1960s, there is also a Lebanese cedar, like the one on the nation’s flag. It is accompanied by the Latin inscription “quasi cedrus in Libano,” from the Book of Ezekiel chapter 35, verse 3, that says “It is Assyria! A cedar of Lebanon.”
“I think it was both Our Lady and St. Charbel that wanted us to come here for many reasons,” Father Kossaify said.
St. Charbel teaches us what it means to be free
Father Kossaify is certain that St. Charbel continues to operate in many Catholics’ lives and has much to teach the faithful in the Church. “I think St. Charbel teaches all of us today and every day to be free. He was free from any thirst for power, from money, from all these things. He teaches us to be free like him because once we are free we can be totally [given] to, for, and with Jesus, without any middleman. He teaches us the way to Jesus,” Father Kossaify said.
“He is also always a model and a challenge, for every Maronite in general and for every OLM priest in particular. He is a model in the sense that he came before us and traced a path to sainthood in a time not so far away from ours. […] We can learn a lot from his life,” said Father Kossaify.
“He is also a challenge because we see his sainthood and we may feel scared, in a good way. We see ourselves as the sinners we are. Even if I am one of St. Charbel’s brothers in his order, I am just a small soldier, a sinner, who asks God every day for mercy and forgiveness. […] St. Charbel is a dear brother who helps us.”
The church is in the midst of a GoFundMe to update its audio and lighting. See more info or donate here.
And today we celebrate...