Encomium on Ephraim

Contents

Reading pages: 819–837 · 839–849

1. 819The preacher, moved by the parable of the lamp, sets out to praise Ephrem the Syrian, although Ephrem had forbidden anyone to praise him.
2. 821Ephrem's very refusal of praise shows his worth; like Paul, who called himself unworthy to be an apostle, he deserves praise, and the church gladly receives this crown of his virtues on his yearly memorial.
3. 823Ephrem is praised as the church's Euphrates, God's vine and faithful steward; the preacher will praise him not for birth, homeland or bodily gifts, which he despised, but for his own life of action and contemplation and its virtues.
4. 825The preacher lists Ephrem's virtues, drawn from his own writings, and begins with his orthodox faith: he rejected Sabellius, Arius, Apollinaris, the Anomoeans and Novatus, confessing the Trinity as one in essence and three in number.
5. 827Ephrem's hope was in God alone, as the Psalms, Jeremiah, Isaiah and Paul commend, and his love was such that he could say at his death that he had never cursed anyone or quarreled with any believer.
6. 829Ephrem's piety, his study and interpretation of all Scripture, his use of secular learning, his purity (shown when a prostitute sent to tempt him was converted), and his constant tears are praised.
7. 831Ephrem's tears and groans fed each other continually, and his writings on repentance, humility, love, virginity and the judgment still move hard hearts; fearing the judgment, he fled to the desert.
8. 833Ephrem moves to Edessa, where a prostitute's retort teaches him humility, and to Caesarea, where he and Basil recognize each other by the Spirit; he receives a vision of a fruitful vine growing from his tongue.
9. 835A seer's vision of angels giving Ephrem a scroll confirms his gift of teaching; his words overflowed so that he begged God to hold back the waves of grace, and he subdued his body by fasting and vigil.
10. 837Ephrem lived in apostolic poverty and deep humility, and in his Testament forbade praise and a costly burial; though owning nothing, he practiced almsgiving by moving others to mercy.
11. 839Ephrem knew the church's doctrines and the heretics' arguments; the author tells how he tricked a woman holding Apollinaris's books into lending them and glued their pages together before a public debate.
12. 841Apollinaris, unable to open his glued books before the debate, withdrew in shame and died; the preacher praises Ephrem's zeal for the faith and likens his soul to a paradise of all the virtues, beginning a comparison with the righteous of the Old Testament.
13. 843Ephrem is compared with Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses, each of whose deeds he matched in a spiritual way, especially in his triumph over heresies.
14. 845Ephrem is further compared with Joshua, Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, John the Baptist and Paul; then the preacher tells how, at Ephrem's death, a man who disobeyed his charge against a costly burial was struck by a demon.
15. 847Ephrem healed the disobedient man who confessed; then he died and his soul entered heaven, welcomed by his own virtues, so that his death is a cause of joy, not tears.
16. 849The preacher explains that he was moved to speak by Ephrem's rescue of a namesake captured by the Ishmaelites, who called on Ephrem for help, and ends by asking Ephrem to pray for the hearers.