The image we have of Charbel Makhluf is of a man with his eyes cast down, reminding us that the saint looked not at the world, but only at God. His life was completely uneventful, which is precisely the point. Charbel guides us not to himself, but to God, and reminds us that silence and contemplation, with all other things set aside, are the royal road to the knowledge of God. It is not about us, and it certainly is not about our activism, which God could probably do without. Contemplation must be at the heart of the Church, and at the heart of every Christian life.He was born in Bekaa Kafra, a village high in the mountains of north Lebanon, in 1828, the fifth child of a mule driver and his wife. He lost his father at an early age, entered a Maronite monastery at the age of 23, and in 187