St. Sharbel Makhluf

A Lebanese Maronite monk who lived as a hermit for the last twenty-three years of his life at the monastery of St. Maron at Annaya, eating one meal a day and offering Mass at noon. After his death his body was found incorrupt and exuded a fragrant fluid for forty years. The first Eastern Catholic saint to be canonized in modern times.

Born Youssef Antoun Makhluf in 1828 in the mountain village of Beka-Kafra in northern Lebanon, he left home at twenty-three to enter the Lebanese Maronite Order. He was ordained in 1859 and lived as a monk at Annaya for sixteen years before receiving permission to withdraw to a nearby hermitage, where his days were ordered entirely around the Eucharist, manual labor, and unbroken silence.

Sharbel died on Christmas Eve 1898, yet his story was only beginning. A mysterious light was seen over his grave, and when the coffin was opened months later the body was perfectly preserved. Pilgrims of every faith — Christian, Muslim, and Druze — have flocked to Annaya ever since, and hundreds of healings have been attributed to his intercession. He was canonized by Paul VI in 1977, a sign of the universal Church's embrace of Eastern holiness.