From Forums of the Virgin Mary [translated from Portuguese]:
The evidence of the healings carried out by Saint Charbel when he was invoked.
History is full of testimonies of apparitions of saints and the healing they achieve in people through their intercessions.
However, there are few times when there is physical evidence of how the saint operated for healing.
The person is simply cured instantly and the doctors declare that science cannot explain the miracle.
But here we at Forums will talk about a healing that Saint Charbel performed on a woman, through neck surgery, to heal her from a hemiplegia, and that left the marks of the operation.
And this intervention was so extraordinary that the Maronites celebrate on January 22 this miracle of Saint Charbel, the main Maronite saint.
The Maronites are one of the largest Christian communities in the East; there are about 800,000 and the majority live in Lebanon.
They are the followers of the Lebanese hermit, Saint Maron, who died around the year 423 in the region of present-day Homs, in Syria.
These Christians fled from the Muslims to the mountains of Lebanon.
And the Maronite Church has always remained united to Rome.
Its most famous saint is Saint Charbel, who lived in the second half of the 19th century.
He spent 23 years of his life as a layman, another 23 as a monk and then as a priest, and the last 23 years of his life as a hermit.
He lived in poverty, silence, obedience, fasting, mortification, and abstinence.
His great particularity is the performance of miracles, especially in sick, disabled and dying people.
His second peculiarity is that the miracles multiplied after his death.
And the third is that many images of him exude oil all over the world.
The monastery where Saint Charbel lived in Annaya, Lebanon, is full of objects that tell of the saint’s miracles, and receives four million visitors a year, including from other religions, especially Muslims.
Father Charbel was 70 years old when he suffered a stroke while celebrating Mass.
His body was buried in the ground without a coffin, dressed in the full habit of the order and without embalming, according to the custom of the monks.
A prophecy that the world would hear more of Charbel after his death was soon fulfilled, his tomb immediately surrounded by “extraordinary brilliance” — for the next 45 nights.
The tomb was opened four months after his death and his body was found incorrupt.
For 67 years the body remained intact and gave off a liquid that is described as a mixture of water and blood.
And soon the custom of soaking pieces of cloth with this liquid and distributing them as relics began, and impressive cures have been credited.
Finally Charbel’s body followed its natural course. When the tomb was opened at the time of his beatification in 1965, it was found disintegrated, except for the skeleton, which was bright red.
In the records of the Monastery of Saint Maron in Annaya, more than 33,000 healing miracles through the intercession of Saint Charbel have been validated.
There are those who were cured with prayer, others with blessed oil or incense, or with the saint’s belt or cloak, or by participating in the Divine Liturgy at the Saint’s tomb or in the hermitage, or by praying the novena to Saint Charbel.
The most famous modern miracle from his intercession happened in 1993 and since then thousands gather around the world on January 22 to celebrate it.
Nohad El Shami, a 55-year-old woman, mother of 12 children, was healed of a hemiplegia on the left side, which had come on January 9, 1993 and affected her leg, arm, and mouth.
The doctors concluded that there was no medicine or treatment that could cure her.
However there was still a slim chance of performing surgery at a later date, to replace the clogged arteries with new plastic arteries.
Nohad’s eldest son, Saad, went to the hermitage of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Annaya, on Mount Lebanon, immediately after hemiplegia struck, to ask Saint Charbel for help.
Saad prayed a lot to Saint Charbel for his mother’s healing, and brought consecrated oil and earth from Saint Charbel’s tomb.
While Nohad’s daughter applied the consecrated oil and earth on Nohad’s body, immediately Nohad felt tingling in her hand and feet.
On the night of January 21-22, 1993, Nohad was asleep, unable to walk on her own, and only fed with a straw.
And that night, Nohad saw in a dream two Maronite monks standing by her bed.
One of the monks told him, “Don’t be afraid, I am Father Charbel, I have come to operate on you.”
He put his hands on her neck and began operating on her, while the other monk, who revealed himself to be Saint Maron, relieved her pain, holding a pillow to her back.
And when Nohad awoke from the dream, she discovered two long surgical wounds on each side of her neck, photos of which are invaluable.
She also noticed that she could move her arms and walk normally.
Nohad was completely cured of hemiplegia. [scroll for more:]
And the next night, Nohad saw Saint Charbel again in her dream and he told her, “I did the surgery so that people would see and return to faith.
“I ask you to visit my hermitage in Annaya on the 22nd of every month and attend mass regularly for the rest of your life.”
Another great contemporary miracle through the intercession of Saint Charbel happened in 2016.
Dafne Gutierrez, a 30-year-old mother of three young children, residing in Phoenix, Arizona, had intracranial hypertension since she was a child.
In 2012 Dafne lost sight in her left eye and in 2015 in her right eye, plunged into total darkness and was declared legally blind.
She could look directly at the sun and see no light at all.
In addition, she suffered from headaches, seizures, tinnitus, vomiting, and dizziness.
In January 2016, Dafne had heard from a television report that first-class relics of Saint Charbel Makhlouf were on a pilgrimage across the US.
And that they were going to be at a nearby Maronite Catholic church over the weekend of January 16-17.
Dafne went with her husband and sister-in-law, and she said to Saint Charbel when she entered, “I don’t know who you are, but please help me.”
After the Mass and the veneration of the relics of Saint Charbel, Father Wissam Akiki confessed Dafne, laid hands on her, blessed her with holy oil, and she touched the first-class relic of Saint Charbel, praying to be healed.
And the curious thing is that while the priest imposed his hands on her, she felt another person next to her, but in reality, no one was seen.
And the next day, at 4:00 in the morning, she woke suddenly with burning eyes and a headache, like after an operation.
Her eyes felt hot, vibrating, and moving.
And she noticed a strong smell, like “burnt meat”.
Then she realized that she could see her husband very dimly, like a shadow, in the glow of the night!
She wiped her eyes, opened them again to see if she could really see, and she could.
Exactly three days after her weekend visit to venerate the relics, she fully regained her sight, to 20/20 vision.
Several doctors later stated that there is no scientific answer to what happened.
There are thousands of miraculous healings reported through the intercession of Saint Charbel.
The miracle for her beatification happened to Sister Marie-Abel Kamari of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Bikfaya, affected by a very serious form of pyloric ulcer that prevented her from eating.
She was operated on twice without positive results and her condition worsened with constant bone pain, paralysis of the right hand, etcetera.
She was taken to the tomb of Saint Charbel, touched the tomb, and felt a draft on her back.
And while she was praying at the graveside she saw the name of Saint Charbel written on the stone and crowned with shining beads of sweat.
She dried them with her veil and applied them to the area of pain.
And suddenly, she got up and walked around shouting for joy because she was healed.
While the miracle for the canonization was the prodigious healing of Myriam Aouad, from Mammana, affected by an incurable throat cancer, who was healed in 1967, other prodigies have also happened.
In 1992, 15-year-old Samira Hannoch reported having a vision of Charbel in her home near Stockholm.
And ever since, oil has been sprouting from a portrait of Saint Charbel and has been associated with a number of healings.
It has also been reported that a statue of Saint Charbel has oozed oil at a Maronite Catholic church in Las Vegas, Nevada.
And Raymond Nader, a Lebanese electromechanical engineer, has recorded five fingerprints literally burned into his arm since 1994, from a visit to the hermitage of Saint Charbel in Annaya.
Also reported: a series of messages from the saint himself.
Well up to here what we wanted to tell about the healing miracles of Saint Charbel, which were celebrated on January 22, because on that day there was physical evidence that Saint Charbel appeared to a woman and performed surgery to heal her. And we at Forums would like to ask you if you have known other miracles of this Maronite saint or not.