#family

"In an article in Nadia Sader described what happened to her when she drank a brew in which oak leaves from Nouhad's tree had been soaked... she was totally paralyzed; she suffered tremendous pain and expected to die at any moment. Her mother-in-law suggested trying the oak leaves which had been blessed by St Charbel... "As I drank the hot liquid, I felt a burning inside... horrible, indescribable... I was howling, screaming, from pain and also from fear. Suddenly I saw the most wonderful scene in my life: I saw the heart of Jesus, red like blood, beating. The heart was all surrounded by light and my children were standing around it. Then I lost consciousness.... People around me saw my right foot making violent movements, rising up and falling down with an unbelievable force. I remember nothing of all of this... I stayed in bed... till the morning of the third day... only then did I know I had been cured, and I was able to walk again normally...Nadia Sader still did not know what to make of it all, wavering between belief and non-belief, even after several more appearances to her of Charbel and Jesus. "I have snatched you from your deathbed, and you still don't believe?" Jesus asked her. Nadia's home became a place of pilgrimage where icons of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and St Charbel exuded oil..."

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“The family is the basis of the Lord’s plan; and all forces of evil are focusing all their evil on destroying the family because they know that by destroying the family, the foundations of the plan of God will be shaken. The war of the Evil One against the Lord is his war against the family, and the war of the Evil One against the family is the core of his war against the Lord. Because the family is the image of God, from the beginning of the creation of this universe, The Evil one is focusing on destroying the family, the foundation of God’s plan.”

“Strange things happen to Nohad al-Shami. In 1993 her painting of St Charbel began oozing oil. Around the same time the long-dead saint appeared in her dreams. 'I have come to operate on you,' he said. And so he did, curing her of hemiplegia , she claims. At the mountain-top monastery of Annaya, in north-west Lebanon, a mass is said every month to mark the miracle and to pray for new ones.”

“Their buildings rise, their morality sinks. Their worldly goods increase, their values diminish. Their speeches multiply, their prayers grow scarce.... An edifice based on man may well rise, but it ends up crushing him.”

“Persevere in prayer without ceasing.. to understand and live according to his will, not to change it.”

“On Christmas Eve in 1898, Father Charbel died. His body was interred in the ground without a coffin and without embalming, according to the monk's custom, dressed in the full habit of the order.”

“For the next 45 nights, a most unusual event occurred: According to many local townspeople, an extraordinarily bright light appeared above his tomb, lighting the night sky. Finally, after the mysterious light persisted, officials at the monastery petitioned the ecclesiastical authorities for permission to exhume Charbel's body. When the grave was opened four months after Charbel's death, his body was found to be incorrupt.”