My beloved spiritual brothers and sisters in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE. Ο ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΕΝ ΤΩ ΜΕΣΩ ΗΜΩΝ! ΚΑΙ ΗΝ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΙ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΑΙ.
ON JANUARY 28TH OUR HOLY ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN CHURCH COMMEMORATES THE FEAST DAY OF SAINT EPHRAIM THE SYRIAN
Saint Ephraim the Syrian was a Syrian deacon and a prolific Syriac-language hymnographer and theologian of the 4th century. He is venerated by Christians throughout the world, and especially laity among Orthodox Christians, as a Saint.
Saint Ephraim wrote a wide variety of hymns, poems, and sermons in verse, as well as prose biblical exegesis. These were works of a practical theology for the edification of the Church in troubled times. So popular were his works that, for centuries after his death, Christian authors wrote hundreds of pseudepigraphous works in his name. Saint Ephraim's works witness to an early form of Christianity in which Western ideas take little part. He has been called the most significant of all of the Holy Fathers of the Syriac-speaking Church Tradition.
Life
Newly excavated Church of Saint Jacob in Nisibis, where Saint Ephraim taught and ministered.
Saint Ephraim was born around the year 306 AD in the city of Nisibis (the modern Turkish town of Nusaybin, on the border with Syria, which had come into Roman hands only in 298 AD). Internal evidence from Saint Ephraim's hymnody suggests that both his parents were part of the growing Christian community in the city, although later hagiographers wrote that his father was a pagan priest. Numerous languages were spoken in the Nisibis of Saint Ephraim's day, mostly dialects of Aramaic. The Christian community used the Syriac dialect. The culture included pagan religions, Judaism and early Christian sects.
Jacob, the first bishop of Nisibis, was appointed in 308 AD, and Saint Ephraim grew up under his leadership of the community. Jacob of Nisibis is recorded as a signatory at the First Ecumenical Council of Nicea in 325 AD. Saint Ephraim was baptized as a youth, and almost certainly became a son of the covenant, an unusual form of Syrian proto-monasticism. Jacob appointed Saint Ephraim as a teacher. He was ordained as a deacon either at his baptism or later. He began to compose hymns and write biblical commentaries as part of his educational office. In his hymns, he sometimes refers to himself as a 'herdsman', to his bishop as the as the 'shepherd' and his community as a 'fold'. Saint Ephraim is popularly credited as the founder of the School of Nisibis, which in later centuries was the center of learning of the Church of the East.
In 337 Emperor Constantine I, who had legalized and promoted the practice of Christianity in the Roman Empire, died. Seizing on this opportunity, Shapur II began a series of attacks into Roman North Mesopotamia, Nisibis was besieged in 338 AD, 346 and 350. During the first siege, Saint Ephraim credits Bishop Jacob as defending the city with his prayers. In the third siege, of 350 AD, Shapur rerouted the River Mygdonius to undermine the walls of Nisibis. The Nisbenes quickly repaired the walls while the Persian elephant cavalry became bogged down in the wet ground. Saint Ephraim celebrated what he saw as the miraculous salvation of the city in a hymn which portrayed Nisibis as being like Noah's Ark, floating to safety on the flood.
One important physical link to Saint Ephraim's lifetime is the baptistery of Nisibis. The inscription tells that it was constructed under Bishop Vologeses in 359 AD. In that year Shapur attacked again. The cities around Nisibis were destroyed one by one, and their citizens killed or deported. Constanius II was unable to respond; the campaign of Julian ended with his death in battle. His army elected Jovian as the new emperor, and to rescue his army he was forced to surrender Nisibis to Persia, and permit the expulsion of the entire Christian population.
Saint Ephraim with the others went first to Amida (Diyarbakir), eventually settling in Edessa (modern Sanhurfa) in 363 AD. Saint Ephraim, in his late fifties, applied himself to ministry in his new church, and seems to have continued his work as a teacher, perhaps in the School of Edessa. Edessa had always been at the heart of the Syriac-speaking world and the city was full of rival philosophies and religions. Saint Ephraim comments that Orthodox Nicene Christians were simply called 'Palutians' in Edessa, after a former bishop. Arians, Marcionites, Manichees, Bardaisanites and various Gnostic sects proclaimed themselves as the true Church. In this confusion, Saint Ephraim wrote a great number of hymns defending Nicene Orthodoxy. A later Syriac writer, Jacob of Serugh, wrote that Saint Ephraim rehearsed all-female choirs to sing his hymns set to Syriac folk tunes in the forum of Edessa. After a ten-year residency in Edessa, in his sixties, Saint Ephraim succumbed to the plague as he ministered to its victims. The most reliable date for his death is 9 June 373 AD.
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Prayer of Saint Ephraim the Syrian
[It is recited at Holy Lent]
O Lord and Master of my life, Grant not unto me a spirit of idleness, of discouragement, of lust for power, and of vain speaking.
But bestow upon me, Thy servant, the spirit of chastity, of meekness, of patience, and of love.
Yea, O Lord and King grant that I may perceive my own transgressions, and judge not my brother, for blessed art Thou unto ages of ages. Amen.
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(To be continued)
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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!"--Saint John Chrysostom
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With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia (Ministry),
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George