There’s an old saying—the saints we rely upon find us. For me that was St. Charbel. In St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, in a remote corner behind the altar, there’s a relic of his. Whenever I’m there, I pay a visit to the relic and ask for his intercession.
St. Charbel’s life speaks to me. He grew up poor in a remote village in Lebanon. He lived a life of hard work and penance. He prayed. Commentators say that he only ate one meal a day and that when he prayed tears would well up in his eyes. When he died, miracles began (and continue) to happen both in Lebanon and around the world, thanks to his intercession.
How can it be that the world comes to know of such a man who lived an “invisible life” in some far corner of Lebanon?
It’s because saints change the world.
One of the things about Charbel’s life that speaks to me most I happened to discover through an old foreign film about him. In a powerful scene, a woman from his youth comes into his confessional. She had lived a bad life. After she confesses her sins, Charbel says to her: “I give you no penance for your sins; I will do your penance for you.” This statement really moved me. It came from his heart. Charbel loved his people. And because he had been given a great gift of faith—something others did not have—he used it by putting it at the service of others.
In a recent Gospel, Jesus addresses His friends and the herculean task ahead of them: to bring the Gospel to the far corners of the world. These men too were given a great gift: “Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.” But with this gift comes a great responsibility. The responsibility to share it with the world.
Like the first twelve, St. Charbel was given a great gift, and, if you are reading this and God has given you faith, then you have received it too. So the question needs to be asked, What are you doing with it?
Blessed are you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth; you have revealed to little ones the mysteries of the Kingdom.
On the feast day of St. Charbel, I read a commentary about his life by a Lebanese professor. In the commentary, he spoke about the people Jesus chose to bring the Gospel to the world. Fr. El Khoury writes:
Jesus chose not saints but sinners to join him and accompany him for three years, living the life of disciples, suffering weariness, failure, pain, doubt and betrayal. Transforming them to become worthy of their task demanded a great deal of time and attention. The group chosen by Jesus doesn’t appear in any way blessed with leadership skills required to proclaim the Good News to others. Among them are a tax collector, a skeptic, a traitor, and a thief, one who is stubborn, one who is jealous, another rebellious and a persecutor of Christians, one “unnaturally born,” as Paul always considered himself. And little by little, these men understood who Jesus was and what their vocation was. There is an enormous difference between Simon Peter the disciple and Peter the shepherd, between Matthew the tax collector and Matthew the Evangelist, between doubting Thomas and Thomas the believer, between Saul the persecutor and Paul the preacher. It was the work of love that transformed them. Little by little, the disciples became mirrors reflecting the light of Christ.
How does this apply to us? Do we understand that within our souls there is something so great and powerful as this—the potential for transformation? It was given to us at our Baptism, the “mustard seed” of faith, the Holy Spirit Himself! If we allow it to grow, like the twelve apostles and like St. Charbel, God will transform us and others through us.
This, however, requires our full intentionality. So, I ask again, what are you, a Baptized Christian, going to do with your gift of faith? Are we like St. Charbel who, out of love for his old friend suffering the consequences of sin, did penance for her?
The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a person took and sowed in a field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, yet when fully grown it is the largest of plants. It becomes a large bush, and the birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.
When Jesus tells the parable of the mustard seed, He is talking about you. You are that seed. Allow that gift of faith to grow in you!
To anyone who has, more will be given, and he will grow rich; from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away.
God found Charbel, a holy man who lived a hidden life in a remote corner of the world, and now the whole world knows who he is. Do you think God cannot find you? If so, I ask you to say a small prayer today, in your own words, asking for the intercession of St. Charbel. Ask him to help you, both to accept God’s gift of faith and to spread it throughout the world. I ask him the same, every time I find myself in St. Patricks’ Cathedral.
It seems appropriate that Charbel’s relic is placed in a far corner of the cathedral, like Charbel himself who lived a hidden life in a remote corner of Lebanon. God takes our smallest of offerings and brings abundance from them. God can do anything—if only we trust in Him!
Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash
