SAINT SHARBEL MAKHLUF
Priest
(1828-1898)
Joseph Zaroun Makhluf was born in a small mountain village of Lebanon. Raised by an uncle who opposed the boy's youthful piety, he snuck away at age 23 to join the Baladite monastery of Saint Maron at Annaya where he took the name Charbel in memory of a 2nd century martyr. He was ordained in 1858.
Devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary, he spent the last twenty-three years of his life as a hermit. Despite temptations to wealth and comfort, Sharbel lived as a model monk on the bare minimums of everything. He gained a reputation for holiness, and was much sought for counsel and blessing. He had a great personal devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, and was known to levitate during his prayers. He was briefly paralyzed just before his death.
Several post-mortem miracles were attributed to him, including periods in 1927 and 1950 when a bloody "sweat" flowed from his corpse. His tomb has become a place of pilgrimage for Lebanese and non-Lebanese, Christian and non-Christian alike.
Sharbel taught the value of poverty, self-sacrifice, and prayer by the way he lived. He was beatified in 1965 and canonized in 9 October 1977 by Pope Paul VI.
July 24th is the feast-day for St. Sharbel Makhlouf on the Universal Church. The Maronite Church celebrates him on the 3rd Sunday of July and on December 24th, the day he went to heaven.
SAINT CHRISTINA
Virgin and Martyr
(† c. 300)
St. Christina was the daughter of a rich and powerful magistrate named Urbain. Her father, who was deep in the practices of heathenism, had a number of golden idols, which our Saint destroyed, and distributed the pieces among the poor. Infuriated by this act, Urbain became the persecutor of his daughter; he had her whipped with rods and then thrown into a dungeon. Christina remained unshaken in her faith.
Her tormentor then had her body torn by iron hooks, and fastened her to a rack beneath which a fire was kindled. But God watched over his servant and turned the flames upon the lookers-on. Christina was next seized, a heavy stone tied about her neck, and she was thrown into the lake of Bolsena, but she was saved by an angel, and outlived her father, who died of spite.
Later, this martyr suffered the most inhuman torments under the judge who succeeded her father, and finally was thrown into a burning furnace, where she remained, unhurt, for five days. By the power of Christ she overcame the serpents among which she was thrown; then her tongue was cut out, and afterwards, being pierced with arrows, she gained the martyr's crown at Tyro, a city which formerly stood on an island in the lake of Bolsena in Italy, but was long since swallowed up by the waters.
Her relics are now at Palermo in Sicily.