Saint Charbel. Prayer to Saint Charbel. Icon of St. Charbel

Nothing helps a person so to stay afloat, like faith. It is she who moves him forward, and sometimes it is only the faith that is able to perform 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 explain from this position what ordinary people tell them , And what appears before their own eyes.

Religion knows many miracle workers. During their lifetime, few believed them, many called charlatans and magicians. Most of them were hermits and outcasts who lived far from the big world, but at the same time they helped those who needed it. After the death, many of them were ranked as saints, and today crowds of pilgrims come to their relics. Someone out of curiosity, and someone cherishes in my soul splinters of broken hope in my hopeless situation, when absolutely everything was powerless, and there is nowhere to wait for help.

One such wonderworker is Saint Charbel, a monk and healer who lived, if not the longest, truly blessed life, performed a huge number of miracles around the world after his death.

Today the monastery of Annaya in Lebanon, where the saint died and where his body is located, which did not decompose after almost 116 years, is a place of pilgrimage, where more than a million people from almost 100 countries visited with their misfortune. Most of them immediately received the help of a saint and were healed of disease. Everyone who suffers, who has an icon of St. Charbel in the house, believes that she can do no less miracles than his body if it is applied to a painful place. But how did the monk live his earthly life, what miracles he did, how he helped people and why his body remains imperishable after a lapse of a century and again brings people hope for recovery? Let's try to answer these questions.

Earth life

St. Charbel at the birth was named Yusef Mahluf. He grew up in a peasant family in one of the villages of Lebanon, born in 1828. He was a silent and modest child, always trying to seclude himself. The boy's love for his mother was strong, and she was a very religious woman.

Already in his early years he was called a saint, as he almost always prayed. When he was trapped in the mountains of goats, he found a grotto that he adapted for prayers, making an altar there and placing the images of the Blessed Virgin and the Lord there.

Having lived the first 23 years of his life in his native village, he strengthened his desire to devote himself to God, reached the place of the pilgrim to the place of Meifuk and became a novice of the monastery there.

After finishing his five-year training in Criphane, he returned to Annaya, where he lived until his death in 1898.

In front of the monastery, where the body of the monk is resting, a monument was erected: St. Charbel (you can see the photo of the monument below) stands lifting his hand on the pedestal with the steps leading to it, where all the time believers, kissing and ironing clothes of metal, Warm to the touch. The last unexplained phenomenon is connected just with this monument. When the Pope announced in Rome about the canonization of Charbel, the right hand rose, as if he welcomed the believers. Who knows, maybe this is not the last miracle in the chain that has already happened.

Prophecies

For the first time Youssef predicted the appearance of the image of the Virgin in different parts of the Earth. In his vision, the Earth was shining because of the multitude of points, and each point was an image of the statue of the Virgin Mary that stood in their house. This prophecy has come true.

Before the adoption of monasticism, he began talking about the myrrh content of icons and statues of the Virgin, which, he said, was to force people to change their lives. This event occurred in 1984.

Also, Saint Charbel spoke of the appearance of a woman who will speak through the lips of the Most-Pure Virgin and suffer many sufferings, which happened a year earlier, predicted by him the mirotation, in 1983 in Argentina.

He wrote and prophesied a lot. Basically, he was worried about the fall of true faith, the spread of hypocrisy, a huge number of temptations, and the absence of a moral spiritual religious leader.

What preceded the miracles?

The monk died on the 71st year of his life, having spent the last 25 years in hermitage at work in the vineyard. He voluntarily lived in Spartan conditions: eating once a day, sleeping on the floor cells, a log instead of a pillow. He grew grapes, worked tirelessly and successfully healed the peasants from the neighborhood, not denying help and support to anyone.

Perhaps his righteous life was the reason that he continued to heal people after death. This began with amazing events that occurred a few days after St. Charbel left the earthly world.

The beginning of the inexplicable

The monk was buried in early 1898, and the next day over the monastery of St. Maron, where his body rested, noticed a strange glow that attracted crowds of onlookers. Then it had nothing to do with Saint Charbel. But in the spring of 1899, by the will of circumstances, the crypt had to be opened, and then it was discovered that the body remained absolutely imperishable, flexible and elastic, without a characteristic cadaveric odor. The doctors who confirmed the death of the monk were summoned.

The cause of this phenomenon could not be clarified, but on the body there was a perspiration in the form of a pink liquid - a sugary, it did not harden and did not smolder. A council of physicians fought over this riddle, putting forward the version that St. Charbel had somehow been eating 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 on public display. The string of pilgrims was pulled to the coffin, which received healing from mental illness, rose to their feet, became visible and began to hear. Those who could not come, they 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 things that remained from the cured pilgrims - tires, crutches, orthopedic shoes and letters - are kept in the International Center of St. Charbel in Lebanon.

The treasure was allocated for almost 20 years, but the body did not turn into a mummy. The moisture was taken from out of nowhere, which introduced scientists and doctors into bewilderment. Lost in conjecture, they could not and still can not explain what is happening.

How to apply for help?

Everyone who needs healing and wants to seek help from a saint will benefit from a printed image that can be attached to sore spots.

Also effective is the prayer to Saint Charbel, which exists in two versions. There is a nine-day cycle of treatment 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, it concerns health.

There is also a separate method of conversion, in which the believer asks God to feel the support and care of the healer-monk, and also to receive help from him.

Whatever the choice of the suffering prayer to Saint Charbel, the nine-day cycle or the traditional one-time treatment, the facts speak for themselves - it is really capable of helping to recover or at least improve their health.

A view from the point of view of science

Of course, today there is still debate about why a miraculous person recovers by making a pilgrimage to the coffin with the body of a Lebanese monk. Numerous studies have been carried out, however, scientists and doctors can not scientifically explain the phenomenon of St. Charbel and understand how the body that has been lying in the coffin for more than a century looks like a man died a few hours ago and gives healing to pilgrims.

Repeatedly, various experiments were conducted, the purpose of which was to shed light on the miracles taking place. The most prominent specialists in their field from all over the world were involved in research. Above the body, absolutely barbarous procedures were conducted, in spite of everything, it remained in its condition.

Our country has not stayed away from studying this phenomenon either. Writer Anatoly Bayukansky, who repeatedly visited Lebanon and talked with those who were helped by a monk, in 2013 released another book about him called "Saint Charbel. Help from heaven. " In it he told about the life of the healer, described in detail all the miracles that he created both during life and after death, and also made attempts to explain them from a rational point of view.

But is it really important, how does it happen? If a person knows exactly why he is recovering, it can no longer be called a miracle. It will also be possible to predict the likelihood of healing, and someone's unclean hands will put this matter on stream. Then all the magic will be lost, and people will lose hope and faith, which they so often need.