Saint Ephraem the Syrian FROM HYMNS ON PARADISE

 

The Harp of the Spirit

Saint Ephraem the Syrian

The Garment of Words

Since the human mind is part of creation, it is unable of its own accord to leap across the gap between created and Creator and to provide any description at all of the hidden Godhead. No theology, talking about God, would in fact be possible at all but for God's own initiative and condescension: stirred by love for humanity, the culmination of his creative activity, He Himself has crossed this gap and allowed Himself to be described in human language and in human terms in the Scriptures as part of the process of his self-revelation. God of thus “put on names”-- the metaphors used of Him in the Bible--and in this way the human intellect is provided with a whole variety of pointers upward, hinting at various aspects of the hiddenness of God, whose true nature, however, cannot possibly describe by, or contained in, human language.

This incarnation of God is a human language is perhaps most fully described by Saint Ephraim in the 31st hymn of the collection On Faith, whose opening five stanzas are worth quoting in full. ~ Dr. Sebastian Brock

Note:  To many, St. Ephraem the Syrian is known best for the beautiful prayer, attributed to him, used during the Great Fast.  Beyond that sacred prayer, I have included the following as an introduction to the shoreless ocean of the saint's glorification of God.   

Our Lord tells us to be still and know that He is God. (Ps. 46:10).  Read the following stanzas in stillness and faith of mind and heart, expecting the sacred "wind" of Paradise, the "Rooh" (Syriac - trans. "Spirit") as St. Ephraem describes, to enter your soul.

 ~ FRA

From 

~ HYMNS ON PARADISE ~

St. Ephrem the Syrian

Introduction and translation

by

Sebastian Brock

FACULTY OF ORIENTAL STUDIES

University of Oxford

Dr. Brock is FBA (Fellowship of the British Academy) is a British scholar, university professor, and expert in the field of academic studies of Classical Syriac language and Classical Syriac literature. His research also encompasses various aspects of cultural history of Syriac Christianity.

Stanza One

Let us give thanks to God Who clothed Himself in the names of the bodies various parts:

Scriptures refers to His "ears" to teach us that He listens to us; 

It speaks of his "eyes" to show that He sees us. 

It was just the names of such things that he put on, 

and---although in His true being there is no wrath or regret---

yet He put on, these names because of our weakness. 

Blessed is he who has appeared to our human race under so many metaphors.

Stanza Two

We should realize that had He not put on the names

of such things, it would not have been possible for Him

to speak with us humans.
By means of what belongs to us did He draw close to us:

He clothed Himself in language, so that He might clothe us 

in His mode of life.

He asked for our form and put this on, and then, as a father with his children,

He spoke with our childish state.

Blessed is he who has appeared to our human race under so many metaphors.

Stanza Three

It is our metaphors that He put on---though He did not literally do so;

He then took them off---without actually doing so, when wearing them, He was at the same time stripped of them.

He puts on one when it is beneficial, then strips it off in exchange for another; the fact that He strips off and puts on all sorts of metaphors tells us that the metaphor does not apply to His true Being: because that Being is hidden,

He has depicted it by means of what is visible.

Blessed is he who has appeared to our human race under so many metaphors.

Stanza Four

In one place He was like and Old Man and the Ancient of Days, 

then again, He became like a Hero, a valiant Warrior.

For the purposes of judgement He was an Old Man, but for conflict He was Valiant.

In one place He was delaying; elsewhere having run, He became weary.

In one place He was asleep, in another, in need: by every means did He weary Himself so as to gain us.

Blessed is he who has appeared to our human race under so many metaphors.

Stanza Five

For this is the Good One, who could have formed us to please Him, without any trouble to Himself; but instead He toiled by every means so that we might act pleasingly to Him by our own free will, that we might depict our beauty with the colors that our own free will had gathered; whereas had He adorned us then we would have resembled a portrait that someone else had painted, adorning it with his own colors.

Blessed is he who has appeared to our human race under so many metaphors.

Saint Ephraem humorously goes on to compare God's action in teaching humanity about Himself to that of someone who tried to teach a parrot to talk, with the help of a mirror. ~ Sebastian Brock