Saint Ephrem the Syrian

Saint Ephrem the Syrian was a deacon, theologian and poet, a teacher of the faith at Nisibis and Edessa. Benedict XVI called him the most important representative of Syriac-speaking Christianity, and tradition gave him the title Harp of the Holy Spirit. The Church commemorates him on June 9.

He was born around 306 at Nisibis in Mesopotamia, present-day Nusaybin in Turkey. According to Benedict XVI he came from a Christian family, although other accounts speak of a pagan father and of a baptism received only in his youth. He grew up and was formed alongside James, bishop of Nisibis, together with whom he founded the theological school of that city.

He was ordained a deacon and remained a deacon all his life. Benedict XVI saw this as a telling choice: Ephrem was a deacon, that is, a servant. He lived in virginity and poverty, though it is not known for certain whether he was a monk. At Nisibis he taught and preached the word of God until 363, when the city passed into Persian hands. He then moved with his disciples to Edessa.

In Edessa, as the Roman Martyrology records, he laid the foundations of a school of theology and carried out his ministry by word and by writing, distinguished by the austerity of his life. He taught Sacred Scripture, preached, and defended the faith against heresies. Because heretics spread their teachings through songs, he composed his own hymns on the truths of the faith and taught the faithful to sing them. According to tradition he visited Saint Basil the Great at Caesarea in Cappadocia.

He wrote in Syriac. His extensive work includes commentaries on Sacred Scripture and polemical writings, poetic prose, homilies in verse, and above all hymns. Sung on liturgical feasts, they brought the teaching of the Church closer to the faithful. Ephrem did theology in the form of poetry, drawing images from nature, from daily life and from the Bible, and he devoted much attention to the mystery of the Incarnation and to Mary.

When famine struck Edessa, he left his solitude, rebuked those who were hoarding grain, and distributed the money collected from the rich. In the public porticoes of the city he set up about three hundred beds and himself nursed the sick and the starving. He died in Edessa on June 9, 373. Benedict XVI relates that he caught the contagion while caring for the plague-stricken. In his testament he asked not to be buried under the altar or in a church, but in his everyday clothes, and to be accompanied with psalms and prayer.

Venerated since antiquity in the East and in the West, he was proclaimed a Doctor of the Universal Church by Benedict XV in the encyclical Principi Apostolorum Petro of October 5, 1920. In it the Pope presented him as a model of holiness, learning and fatherly love.