NAPLES, Italy (LifeSiteNews) — A bottle of blessed oil is attested by many witnesses to have miraculously replenished during a Mass in honor of St. Charbel, after it was used to anoint hundreds in attendance.
On July 24, at St. Ferdinand Church in Naples, Italy, Monsignor Pasquale Silvestri offered a Mass in honor of the renowned Lebanese saint, which was attended by over 500 people, “many of them ill,” as Catholic News Agency reported.
After the Mass, Fr. Silvestri proceeded to anoint attendees with blessed oil gifted by Maronite clergy in Rome, sent specifically for that Mass. “I didn’t imagine there would be so many people, so there came a time when the jar was almost empty, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to satisfy everyone,” Fr. Silvestri recounted in a letter addressed to Father Elias Hamhoury, former postulator of the cause for canonization of St. Charbel.
Fr. Silvestri saw the bottle was getting close to empty as he was anointing the last of those in attendance, but was astonished to see after he finished that the jar of oil had miraculously refilled.
“When I finished, I closed the jar and put it back in its case. But when I put it back in the safe, I realized it was full again. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” the priest continued in his letter.
He affirmed to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, “I was very surprised, because the jar was empty. In fact, I was afraid because there wouldn’t be enough to anoint everyone, and I turned the jar upside down several times” to get the last few drops.
When he realized that the jar was full again and that it “weighed more than before,” Fr. Silvestri turned to the faithful to show them and explain what had happened. “Everyone applauded when they saw it,” he told ACI Prensa.
“I’m not a miracle worker, absolutely not, but in this case there was a production of matter; this is a very serious thing,” he stressed.
According to ACI Prensa, members of the faithful have informed the priest of physical or spiritual healings after attending the Mass. “I’ve received about five or six similar accounts, and I’ve asked them to write them all down,” he said.
It is said that more miracles are attributed to St. Charbel than any other saint, besides the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph. Over 33,000 miracles have been documented at the monastery where he is buried, including many physical healings of cancer and other afflictions including paralysis, blindness, and autism.
Fr. Silvestri told ACI Prensa that he only recently had begun a devotion to the saint and had a memorable dream about him before the miracle occurred.
“I didn’t know him; I heard about him recently, and I really liked his story. So I put up a picture in my church out of devotion,” he explained.
Although he has never “believed in dreams,” he shared, “When I put up this picture, one night I dreamed that St. Charbel was looking at me and was laughing. This really struck me because the photo of St. Charbel is always that of a very serious man, but he was smiling at me.”
Since this dream, he decided to dedicate the Masses on the last Friday of June and July to the saint.
The life of St. Charbel
St. Charbel was born Youssef Antoun Makhlouf on May 8, 1828, to a poor family in a tiny mountain village in Lebanon. His father died when Youssef was just a young boy, and his mother took care of the children the best that she could, as LifeSite has detailed. She was a very devout woman who fasted regularly and said the Rosary daily. Her example helped lay the groundwork for the intense prayer life and closeness to both God and the Blessed Virgin Mary that Youssef would eventually find.
Youssef was in charge of taking care of the family’s small herd of cows, and every day when he would take them to graze in the field, he would go to a nearby grotto dedicated to Mary to pray. The people in his village knew this and began calling him “the saint.”
Though his mother wanted him to marry, Youssef had a deep desire to serve God in religious life. When he was 23, he left his village and entered the monastery. He changed his name to Charbel and in 1859 was ordained a priest in the Maronite order.
For the next 16 years, Charbel worked in the monastery, prayed, and sacrificed. People would travel from all over to see him because he had the ability to perform miracles. His superior knew this, and he would often ask him to go to the surrounding towns to heal the sick. It is said that Charbel not only healed people from physical ailments, but he healed them from spiritual ailments as well, even casting out demons. This ability to heal people led him to be known as the “wonder worker.”
Charbel would spend hours kneeling in front of Christ in the Eucharist and praying that the world would return to God. He made the Eucharist the center of his life.
In 1898, Charbel suffered a stroke while saying Mass, and as he fell to the ground, he held tightly to the Eucharist so as not to allow Christ to fall to the floor. A little over a week later, Charbel died.
The miracles that Charbel performed while on earth did not stop with his death. Even on the night of his death, it was reported that a bright light emanated from his tomb. It continued to do so, and his superior sought permission to open the tomb.
He eventually got permission to open Charbel’s tomb in April of 1899. When they opened it, they found Charbel’s body to be incorrupt. In addition, it was exuding a “blood-like moisture” — something it would continue to do for nearly 70 years.
His tomb was opened eight times between 1950 and 1975, and each time it was examined by doctors and representatives of the Church. His body continued to be incorrupt.
After the first opening in 1899, the superior had Charbel’s body transferred to a different coffin and moved it into the monastery. When people found out, they began to visit and ask for Charbel’s intercession.
There are countless thousands of miracles reported in Lebanon and abroad that do not appear in these records at his tomb. Cameron Bertuzzi, who runs the Capturing Christianity YouTube channel, shared the stories of a few of St. Charbel’s documented miracles earlier this year.
