The story of Saint Charbel: a Maronite monk in the heart of the Lebanese mountains
A child of Lebanon, marked by faithBorn in 1828 in the small village of Bekaa Kafra in northern Lebanon, Youssef Antoun Makhlouf grew up in a deeply religious Maronite Christian family. Orphaned at a very young age, he was brought up by his mother, who passed on to him a simple and robust faith. From an early age, Youssef was drawn to a life of prayer and solitude. He spent hours in a cave not far from his home, transformed into a small hermitage, where he meditated and prayed far from the tumult of the world.At the age of 23, he left everything to enter the monastery of Notre-Dame de Mayfouq, then the monastery of Saint Maron in Annaya, where he took the name Brother Charbel, in homage to a martyr of the ancient Church. He was ordained a priest in 1859.
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