Nothing helps a person stay afloat like faith. It is she who moves him forward, and sometimes only faith is capable of performing such miracles, from which all scientists, accustomed to looking at all phenomena from the point of view of the possibility of their origin, are simply lost and do not know how to interpret from this position what ordinary people tell them., and what appears before their own eyes.
Religion knows a lot of miracle workers. During their lifetime, few believed them, many called them charlatans and conjurers. For the most part, they were hermits and outcasts who lived far from the big world, but at the same time helped those who needed it. After their death, many of them were canonized as saints, and today crowds of pilgrims go to their relics. Someone out of curiosity, and someone cherishes in their souls fragments of broken hope in their hopeless situation, when absolutely everyone turned out to be powerless, and there was nowhere to wait for help.
One of these miracle workers is Saint Charbel, a monk and healer who lived, if not the longest, then truly blessed life, performed a huge number of miraclesaround the world after his death.
Today, the Annaya Monastery in Lebanon, where the saint died and where his body is located, which has not decomposed after almost 116 years, is a place of pilgrimage where more than a million people from almost 100 countries have visited with their misfortune. Most of them immediately received the help of the saint and were healed of their illnesses. Every suffering person who has an icon of St. Charbel in his house believes that it can work no less miracles than his body, if applied to a sore spot. But how did the monk live his earthly life, what miracles did he perform, how did he help people, and why, after a century, his body remains incorruptible and again brings people hope for recovery? Let's try to answer these questions.
Earthly life
Saint Charbel was born Yousef Makhlouf. He grew up in a peasant family in one of the villages of Lebanon, having been born in 1828. He was a silent and modest child, always tried to retire. Strong was the boy's love for his mother, who was known as a very believing woman.
Already in his early years, he was called a saint, as he almost always prayed. When he pastured goats in the mountains, he found a grotto, which he adapted for prayers, making an altar there and placing images of the Blessed Virgin and the Lord there.
After living the first 23 years of his life in his native village, he strengthened his desire to devote himself to God, went on a pilgrimage to the town of Meifuk and became a novice of the monastery there.
After completing five years of study in Krifan, he returned to Annaya, where he lived untilhis death in 1898.
his clothes are made of metal, warm to the touch. The last inexplicable phenomenon is connected precisely with this monument. When the Pope announced Charbel's canonization in Rome, his right hand raised as if he were greeting the faithful. Who knows, maybe this is not the last miracle in the chain of events that have already happened.
Prophecies
For the first time, Yusef prophesied the appearance of the image of the Virgin in different parts of the Earth. In his vision, the Earth glowed because of many dots, and each dot was an image of a statue of the Virgin Mary that stood in their house. This prophecy has come true.
Before accepting monasticism, he spoke about the myrrh-streaming of icons and statues of the Virgin, which, according to him, was supposed to make people change their lives. This event took place in 1984.
Saint Charbel also spoke about the appearance of a woman who would speak through the lips of the Most Pure Virgin and endure a lot of suffering, which happened a year before the myrrh-streaming predicted by him, in 1983 in Argentina.
He wrote and prophesied a lot. Basically, he was worried about the fall of the true faith, the spread of hypocrisy, a huge number of temptations, as well as the lack of a moral spiritual religious leader.
What preceded miracles?
The monk died at the age of 71 after spending the last 25 years as a hermit working in a vineyard. He voluntarily lived in Spartan conditions: eating once a day, sleeping on the floor of the cell, a log instead of a pillow. He grew grapes, worked tirelessly and successfully healed the peasants from the surrounding area, without refusing help and support to anyone.
Perhaps his righteous life was the reason why he continued to heal people even after death. The beginning of this was the amazing events that took place a few days after Saint Charbel left the earthly world.
The Beginning of the Unexplained
The monk was buried at the beginning of 1898, and the next day a strange glow was noticed over the monastery of St. Maron, where his body rested, attracting crowds of onlookers. Then it was not connected in any way with Saint Charbel. But in the spring of 1899, by the will of circumstances, the crypt had to be opened, and then it turned out that the body remained absolutely incorrupt, flexible and elastic, without the characteristic cadaverous smell. Doctors were called and confirmed the monk's death.
The reason for this phenomenon could not be found out, but perspiration appeared on the body in the form of a pink liquid - ichor, it did not harden and did not smolder. A council of doctors fought over this riddle, putting forward the version that Saint Charbel somehow ate especially during his lifetime. However, this version was refuted, and there were no other explanations.
Healing power
In 1909, the body was placed in a coffin with a glass lid and left togeneral view. Strings of pilgrims reached the coffin, who received healing from mental illness, rose to their feet, began to see and began to hear. Those who could not come sent letters with their photos and hair to be attached to the coffin and then sent back to them.
Each healing was documented, and the remains of the cured pilgrims - splints, crutches, orthopedic shoes and letters - are stored at the Saint Charbel International Center in Lebanon.
The ichor was secreted for almost 20 years, but the body did not turn into a mummy. Moisture was taken as if from nowhere, which led scientists and doctors into bewilderment. Lost in conjecture, they could not and still cannot explain what was happening.
How to ask for help?
Anyone who needs healing and wants to seek help from a saint will be helped by a printed image that can be applied to sore spots.
Also effective will be the prayer to St. Charbel, which exists in two versions. There is a nine-day cycle of turning directly to the saint, which consists of nine prayers, read in order, each on a specific day. Reading them daily, the believer asks the saint about what he would like. As a rule, this concerns he alth.
There is also a separate way of addressing, in which the believer asks God to feel the support and care of a healer monk, as well as to receive help from him.
Whatever the prayer chosen by the suffering to Saint Charbel, the nine-day cycle ora traditional one-time treatment, the facts speak for themselves - it really can help you recover or at least improve your he alth.
Scientific perspective
Of course, today the controversy continues about why a person miraculously recovers after making a pilgrimage to the coffin with the body of a Lebanese monk. Numerous studies have been carried out, but scientists and doctors cannot scientifically explain the phenomenon of St. Charbel and understand how a body that has been lying in a coffin for more than a century looks like a person died a few hours ago and gives healing to pilgrims.
Repeatedly conducted various experiments, the purpose of which was to shed light on the ongoing miracles. The most eminent experts in their field from all over the world were involved in the research. Absolutely barbaric procedures were sometimes carried out on the body, in spite of everything, it remained in its condition.
Our country did not remain aloof from the study of this phenomenon. The writer Anatoly Bayukansky, who repeatedly visited Lebanon and talked with those who were helped by the monk, in 2013 published another book about him called “Saint Charbel. Help from heaven. In it, he spoke about the life of a healer, described in detail all the miracles that he performed both during his life and after death, and also made attempts to explain them from a rational point of view.
But does it really matter how it happens? If a person knows exactly why he is recovering, it will already be called a miracle.it is forbidden. It will also be possible to predict the likelihood of healing, and someone's unclean hands will put this business on stream. It is then that all magic will disappear, and people will lose the hope and faith that they sometimes need.
