Cainta's Battle Journal

THE DESCRIPTION OF SAINT EPHREM THE SYRIAN The Patron of Spiritual Directors and Spiritual Leaders Feast Day: June 9

“If there were only one meaning for the words, the first interpreter would find it, and all other listeners would have neither the toil of seeking nor the pleasure of finding.”

The most famous musician of the early Church, was born in Nisibis (modern-day Nusaybin, Turkey) in 306. In retaliation for his baptism at the age of 18, his pagan parents banished him from their house.

Thereafter, he became a disciple of Jacob of Nisibis, whom he accompanied to the First Council of Nicaea in 325. After the fall of Nisibis into the hands of the Persians in 350, he retired to a lonely mountain near Edessa (modern-day Şanlıurfa, Turkey), leading a most austere life.

In the silence of his cave, he wrote the greater part of his spiritual works and biblical commentaries. Ephrem became a deacon, but out of humility he refused to be ordained a priest. Ephrem frequently preached in Edessa, and bravely defended the Catholic faith against false doctrines.

In 373, there was famine in the land of Edessa, and Ephrem offered himself to organize a relief service for the indigent, and exhausted all his energies in the service of the poor, and survived his return to the cave only for one month.

His greatest merit was the introduction of sacred songs into Church’s liturgy, for which he entered into history as ’The Harp of the Holy Spirit’.

When his own death approached, he told his friends: ’Sing no funeral hymns at my burial. Wrap not my carcass in any costly shroud. Erect no monument to my memory. Allow me only the portion and place of a pilgrim, for I am a pilgrim and a stranger, as all my fathers were on earth.’

On June 9, 373 AD, Ephrem died in Edessa. Pope Benedict XV proclaimed Ephrem a Doctor of the Church on October 5, 1920. Soon after Ephrem’s death, legendary accounts of his life began to circulate.