Teachings of Saint Ephrem the Syrian

Ephrem’s artful meditations on the symbols of Christian faith and his stand against heresy made him a popular source of inspiration throughout the church. This occurred to the extent that there is a huge corpus of Ephrem pseudepigraphy and legendary hagiography. Some of these compositions are in verse, often a version of Ephrem’s heptosyllabic couplets. Most of these works are considerably later compositions in Greek. Students of Ephrem often refer to this corpus as having a single, imaginary author called Greek Ephrem or Ephraem Graecus (as opposed to the real Ephrem the Syrian). This is not to say that all texts ascribed to Ephrem in Greek are false, but many are. Although Greek compositions are the main source of pseudepigraphal material, there are also works in Latin, Slavonic and Arabic. There has been very little critical examination of these works, and many are still treasured by churches as authentic.

The most well-known of these writings is the Prayer of Saint Ephrem which is a part of most days of fasting in Eastern Christianity:

O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, meddling, the lust of power, and idle talk. But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to thy servant. O Lord and King, grant me to see my own sins and not to judge my brother, for thou art blessed unto ages of ages. Amen.O God, be gracious to me, a sinner.

-Long-suffering is the Lord, and He draws all of us toward His kingdom, but He requires of us an account for our carelessness during this short time. He will say to us: for you did I take on flesh, for you did I visibly walk about the earth, for you was I beaten, for you was I struck on the face, for you was I crucified and raised on the cross, for you who dwell on earth was I given vinegar to drink, in order to make you holy and heavenly. I have granted you My kingdom, called all of you My brethren, and sent down to you the Holy Spirit. What more is there that I could do but have not done in order to save you? The only thing I do not want to do is to constrain your free will so that your salvation would become a matter of necessity, not of your own choosing. Tell me, O sinners who are mortal by nature: What have you endured for My sake, for your Master Who suffered for you? Let us all come together to worship Him and weep before the Lord Who has created us, and let us say: How shall this race of sinners repay thee, O incomprehensible, good, and kindhearted God? Thou Who hast illumined all the universe with grace, illumine also the eyes of our hearts, that we might love thee, O master, and with love always perform Thy holy will.

• Blessed is he who always humbles himself willingly, for he will be crowned by the One Who willingly humbled Himself for us.
• On Repentance : If you know yourself, that you have within you wounds, born of your thoughts and your deeds, why do you neglect these hidden wounds? Why do you fear the physician? For He is not rough. Neither is He cruel or lacking in compassion. He does not make use of iron or bitter and caustic medicines. He heals, rather, with a word alone.
• The hater of mankind, in his shameless impudence, attacks the Holy Church in the person of her servers. O Lord, do not leave Thy holy Church without Thy care, that the promise that Thou didst utter concerning her invincibility may not be shown false.
• Blessed is the person who has consented to become the close friend of faith and of prayer: he lives in single-mindedness and makes prayer and faith stop by with him. Prayer that rises up in someone’s heart serves to open up for us the door of heaven: that person stands in converse with the Divinity and gives pleasure to the Son of God. Prayer makes peace with the Lord’s anger and with the vehemence of His wrath. In this way too, tears that well up in the eyes can open the door of compassion.
• Find out more about Saint Ephrem the Syrian in the following sources : https://orthodoxwiki.org/Ephrem_the_Syrian#Writings and https://saintephrem.org/