“You are now assisting at the divine altar, and before the Prince of life, with the angels, praising the most holy Trinity. Remember us all, and obtain for us the pardon of our sins.“
Saint Gregory of Nyssa in a public address on Saint Ephrem of Syria after his death in June 373
“… for I am a pilgrim and a stranger as all my fathers were on earth.“
Some of the last words Saint Ephrem of Syria told his friends on his deathbed
By now I have two prayer books, each containing a wildflower mix of prayers and devotions and icons, some copied out of books and glued in place, some handwritten. One is blue, and one is green. The blue one is the older one from 2019. In it one finds some verses the Church received from the hands and pen of Saint Ephrem of Syria, whose traditional feast is celebrated today on the 18th June (9th June according to the new liturgical calendar). There is some kind of little poem by him on the very first page of my blue prayer book, and a prayer on one of the following pages, both given in German. I will try to share them here with you in my own attempt of an English translation of this German version:
“Know that God is God.
Saint Ephrem of Syria
You cannot grasp him.
He is like a vast mysterious ocean,
like a deep depth, without bound. Shiver before Him.
Know also: the evil one is there.
He is a powerful spirit
and a deceiver from the beginning.
He is always couching around you.
Be vigilant and fight against Satan.
But the greatest thing you can do is this:
To pray to God in awe and great simple-mindedness.“
“My Lord, and Master of my Life!
The spirit of idleness, of melancholy, of imperiousness
and of vain chatter take away from me!
But the spirit of chastity, of humility, of patience and of love
grant to me, to Your servant.
O my King and Lord, grant me to see my own iniquities and
to not judge my brother,
for you are blessed from age to age. Amen.“
One feels the pulse of the ancient Church and of the Middle East in these lines, right? Today is the day to learn a bit more about Saint Ephrem of Syria and his life. The following biographical notes are just a very fragmentary sketch, conveying a first impression of this saint.
He was born around the year 306 in Nisibis, modern-day Turkey, back then part of the Roman Empire. At the age of eighteen he was baptized under Bishop Jacob of Nisibis, one of the bishops present at the First Council of Nicea in 325.
Saint Ephrem chose to live as a hermit in poverty and austerity, supporting himself with manual work. He became a deacon of the Church, and thereby a public teacher of the faith (he is honored with the title “Doctor of the Church“), and he used his extraordinary poetic skills to compose hundreds upon hundreds of hymns, songs of praise and prayers rich in imagery, which is why he became known as “the harp of the Holy Spirit“. Some of these hymns were teaching hymns – hymns teaching truths of the faith and warning against the many heresies of his day in a poetic way.
Together with other Christians he had to flee to Edessa during turbulences of conflict and war where he then spent the later part of his life and died in the year 373. In Edessa, he composed many choral hymns for worship and instructed choirs, thereby contributing to an awareness of the importance of beautiful music and singing in the Church, and he organized a mission of assistance to the poor during a famine.
His anonymous biographer noted that “his only food was barley bread and sometimes pulse and vegetables; his drink was water“, “his clothes were of many pieces patched together, and the color of dirt“. According to Saint Gregory of Nyssa, weeping was as natural as breathing for Saint Ephrem: He had the gift of tears. And so I wonder whether Saint Ephrem was of a rather melancholic makeup – which often comes along with poetic and teaching skills and an appreciation for the power that lies within beauty and music to drive away the “spirit of melancholy“ or “faintheartedness“.
There were many gnostic sects around in Saint Ephrem‘s day, and so one of the topics he was focused on in defending the true faith was the Incarnation and humanity of Christ, which also led him to a strong veneration of Christ‘s Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary.
“Thou alone, O Lord, and Thy mother are they who in every respect are wholly beautiful; for there is no spot in Thee, O Lord, nor any stain in Thy mother.”
Saint Ephrem of Syria
“He lived in troublous times, when the forces of heresy were rampant. Not only the frightful scourge of Arianism, but also the gnosticism of Marcion and the religious syncretism of the Manicheans had been unleashed upon the Christian world. And the most noxious heresy of all, in the cities where Ephrem lived and wrote, was that of the Bardesanite. Bardesanes, from whom the movement takes its name, and his son Harmonious, had, in the third century, set forth their pernicious doctrines disparaging the dignity of the human body, in popular melodies which were sweeping through the land. In order to defeat this heresy with its own weapons, Ephrem commenced writing hymns which presented the orthodox position in equally appealing form.“
Article on Saint Ephrem on the website Catholicism.org, published on: https://catholicism.org/st-ephrem.html
I guess defending the true Christian doctrine on creation, the human body, and Christ incarnate and crucified goes together quite well with employing poetry, beauty, music and singing as weapons against the enemy, and that these things do, in fact, belong together. Yet, as we have just read above, the heretics had their songs and hymns, too. Some two hundred years before Saint Ephrem of Syria, Saint Justin Martyr gives us a hint when it comes to the discerning of spirits:
“Many spirits are abroad in the world and the Church, and the credentials they display are splendid gifts of eloquence and ability. Christian, look carefully for the print of the nails.“
Saint Justin Martyr, 2nd century
From this very brief sketch of his life and personality we can already conclude that Saint Ephrem of Syria completed his legacy of palpable praises in honor of a deeply mysterious God with his penitential life lived in the body, a life that was never out of touch with hardship, suffering, and the “way of the cross“.
“Prayer draws into the soul the Holy Spirit, and raises man to heaven.“
Saint Ephrem of Syria
“Do nothing at all unless you begin with prayer.“
“Although I am most sinful and unworthy, I ceaselessly knock at thy door.“
“Blessed the one who continually humbles himself willingly; he will be crowned by the One who willingly humbled himself for our sake.“
“Thou, O Christ our Savior, hast become for me the path of life which leads to the Father. There is but one path, and it is my joy, and at the end of it is the heavenly kingdom.“
“He called the bread His living body and He filled it with Himself and His Spirit. (…) He who eats it with faith, eats fire and Spirit.“
Saint Ephrem of Syria, pray for us!
