Saint Ephrem, Deacon and Doctor of the Church

Ephrem was born about 306 at Nisibis, on the Roman border with Persia, and served the Church there as a deacon and teacher. When Nisibis was handed over to the Persians in 363, he moved with other Christians to Edessa, where he spent his last ten years.

He wrote in Syriac, mostly in verse: hundreds of hymns, many still sung in the Syriac Churches, and poetic sermons and commentaries. He taught choirs of women to sing them. Later Syriac writers called him “the Harp of the Spirit.” Tradition holds that during a famine he organized relief for the hungry and sick of Edessa shortly before his death in 373. Benedict XV named him a Doctor of the Church in 1920.