St. Ephrem

Who they were

Ephrem the Syrian was a deacon of Nisibis and then Edessa, never a priest by his own insistence, and the greatest poet the early Church produced in any language.

His instrument was the madrasha, the teaching hymn. Hundreds survive, theology of astonishing depth carried in metre and image, because Ephrem had noticed that the heretics of his day spread their doctrine through catchy songs and decided the truth should out sing them. His most radical instrument was the choir he built to deliver them: choirs of women, whom he gathered, trained, and set in the liturgy to sing doctrine to the city, an innovation centuries ahead of its era, and the reason the Syriac tradition calls him the Harp of the Spirit. When famine struck Edessa at the end of his life, the aged poet came down from his cell, shamed the hoarders into opening their stores, and personally organized and ran the relief effort, dying in 373 of the disease he had been tending. He was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1920, the only Syriac father so honoured.

Why people turn to St. Ephrem

Church musicians, cantors, and choir directors, with St. Cecilia, St. Gregory the Great, and St. Hildegard. And anyone who teaches through art, since the youth minister with a guitar is his direct descendant.

How to ask their intercession

By singing: one hymn offered as the whole prayer. That counts, and he is the reason it counts.