{"id":307,"date":"2007-11-28T13:07:25","date_gmt":"2007-11-28T13:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/ephrem.html"},"modified":"2007-11-28T13:07:25","modified_gmt":"2007-11-28T13:07:25","slug":"ephrem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/ephrem.html","title":{"rendered":"Ephrem"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had never heard of Ephrem the Syrian <\/a>until a few years ago when I started writing about prayer, and then Mary. Then he was everywhere – in fact, the source of some of the very best, wisest and most beautifully expressed thoughts on spirituality around – especially his hymns.
\nToday, the Pope took up Ephrem in his General Audience <\/a>(continuing his series on the Early Church Fathers.) The unofficial translation from Teresa Benedetta at PRF:<\/a><\/p>\n

It is not known for certain whether he was a monk, but in any case, he remained a deacon all his life and embraced both chastity and poverty. The common and fundamental Christian identity appears in his specificity cultural expression: faith, hope – the hope which allows one to live poor and chaste in this world, placing every expectation only in the Lord – and finally, charity, up to the gift of himself in caring for the victims of the plague.
\nSt, Ephrem has left us a graat theological legacy. His considerable output can be grouped in four categories: works written in ordinary prose (his polemical works and Biblical commentaries); works in poetic prose; homilies in verse; and finally, the hymns, surely Ephrem’s most extensive work.
\nHe is a rich and interesting author in many ways, but especially in his theological profile. The specificity of his work is that theology and poetry encounter each other.
\nIn approaching his doctrine, we must insist from the beginning on this: that he cast theology in poetic form. Poetry allowed him to deepen theological reflection through paradoxes and images. So at the same time, his theology becomes liturgy, it becomes music. He was, in fact, a great composer, a musician.
\nTheology, reflection on the faith, poetry, song, and praise of God all go together; and divine truth appears precisely in the liturgical character of Ephrem’s theology. In his quest for God, in his theology, he followed the way of paradox and symbol. He largely favored contrasting images because they serve to underline the mystery of God.
\nI cannot now present very much of his work, if only because poetry is not easily translatable, but to give at least an idea of his poetic theology, I would like to cite parts of some hymns. Above all, especially in view of the coming Advent, here are some splendid images from the hymn on the nativity of Christ.
\nBefore the Virgin, Eophrem manifests his wonder in inspired words:
\n“The Lrod came to you
\nto become a servant.
\nThe Word came to you
\nto be still in your womb.
\nLightning came to you
\nwithout making any noise.
\nThe Shepherd came to you –
\nand becomes the newborn Lamb
\nwith his submissive plaint.
\nThe womb of Mary
\nhas changed the roles:
\nHe who created all things
\ntook possession in poverty.
\nThe Highest came to you (Mary)
\nbut he entered with humility.
\nSplendor came to you,
\nbut dressed in humble rags.
\nHe who makes all things grow
\nknew hunger.
\nHe who waters everything
\nknew thirst.
\nBare and stripped, he came from you,
\nhe who clothes everything in beauty.”
\n(Hymn “De Nativitate”11, 6-8).
\nTo express the mystery of Christ, Ephrem used a great diversity of expressions and images. In one of his hymns, he effectively links Adam in Paradise with Christ in the Eucharist:
\n“It was the cherubin’s spade
\nthat closed the path
\nto the Tree of LIfe.
\nBut for the people,
\nthe Lord of this tree
\ngave himself as food –
\nhe himself as offering (Eucharistic).
\nThe trees of Eden
\nwere given as food
\nto the first Adam.
\nFor us, the Gardener in person
\nhas made himself food for our souls.
\nIndeed we all left Paradise with Adam,
\nwho left it all behind.
\nNow that the sword has been taken away,
\nthere (on the Cross), we find it again
\nin the lance that pierced.
\n(Hymn, 49,9-11).
\nTo speak of the Eucharist, Ephrem used two images: the ember or burning coal, and the pearl. The ember comes from Isaiah (6.6), in the image of the seraphin who picks up an ember with tongs and simply brushes it across the lips of the prophet in order to purify it. The Christian, on the other hand, takes and swallows the Ember, who is Christ himself.
\n“In your Bread is hidden the Spirit
\nwhich cannot be consumed.
\nIn your wine is the fire
\nwhich cannot be drunk.
\nThe Spirit in the bread,
\nthe fire in your wine:
\nbehold the wonder
\nthat we welcome to our lips.
\nThe seraphin could not, with his fingers, touch the ember
\nwhich he could only bring close to Isaiah’s mouth.
\nThe fingers did not hold it, nor did the mouth ingest it.
\nBut the Lord has conceded both to us.
\nFire descends with ire to destroy sinners
\nbut the fire of grace descends on the bread and stays.
\nInstead of the fire which destroyed people,
\nwe have easten the fire in the bread
\nand we have been revived.
\n(Hymn “De Fide”10,8-10).
\nFinally, a last example of St. Ephrem’s hymns, where he describes the pearl as a symbol of the richness and beauty of the faith:
\n“I place the pearl, my brothers,
\nin the palm of my hand to examine it.
\nI look at it from one side, then the other –
\nand it looks the same from every side.
\nSo it is with our search
\nfor the inscrutable Son –
\nbecause he is all light.
\nIn its limpidity, I see the Limpid
\nwhich does not become opaque.
\nIn its purity, I see the symbol
\nof the pure Body of our Lord.
\nAnd in its indivisibility, I see
\nthe truth which is indivisible.
\n(Hymn “Sulla Perla” 1, 2-3).
\nThe figure of Ephrem is still fully relevant in the life of the various Christian churches. We discover him, first of all, as a theologian who, starting from Sacred Scripture, reflects poetically on the mystery of the redemption of man by Christ, the Word of God incarnate.
\nHis is a theological reflection with images and symbols taken from nature, from daily life and from the Bible. Ephrem confers a didactic and theological character on poetry and hymns for liturgy, Ephrem used these hymns to spread, on liturgical occasions, the doctrine of the Church. And in those times, they proved to be extremely effective as a catechetical means for the Christian community.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had never heard of Ephrem the Syrian until a few years ago when I started writing about prayer, and then Mary. Then he was everywhere – in fact, the source of some of the very best, wisest and most beautifully expressed thoughts on spirituality around – especially his hymns. Today, the Pope took up…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nEphrem - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/ephrem.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ephrem - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I had never heard of Ephrem the Syrian until a few years ago when I started writing about prayer, and then Mary. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}