Hymns and Sermons of Saint Ephrem the Syrian, Volume 1

The feast of the Lord's Nativity is followed from antiquity by the Epiphany, by which the Church celebrates the memory of the Magi and the star, the baptism of Christ, and the miracle performed at Cana. Whether Ephrem added the memory of the Magi to the Epiphany or the feast of the Nativity is not so clear from the codices; he is entirely occupied, however, in those hymns which the liturgical codices have preserved, in celebrating the baptism of Christ, the circumstances and reasons for which he reveals in excellent verses, simultaneously inculcating the nature and effects of the sacrament of baptism, by which man is washed from sins and clothed in the white garments of heavenly grace. We have unearthed fifteen hymns from the codices; some of which are still sung in the baptismal rites of the Jacobites. Furthermore, we have transcribed from a very ancient codex the long discourse about the Lord already praised by Philoxenus of Mabbug, which Ephrem composed for this solemnity.

Hymns on fasting.

The Seer of the Syrians had also composed many sermons and hymns on the Lenten fast, whose fruits and merits he describes. "Behold," he says, "the blessed fast, let us fly to meet it. It is a treasure opened to the prudent, a delight of the heart to those who know, nourishment of the mind to the wise, a triumph of the soul of the prudent and wise intellect." Some of Ephrem's minor works on fasting have been published in Greek, others in Syriac. Two very ancient codices provided us with four hymns out of the ten they once contained, while some liturgical codices provided six others.

Hymns and sermons on the passion and resurrection.

But up to this point, almost everything that the holy Doctor wrote in such quantity on the salvific passion of Christ and his glorious resurrection had remained hidden in the codices. Three Parisian codices provided us with eight sermons, the first of which deals with the Church and the faith confirmed by the miracles of Christ, the second with the anointing of Christ in Bethany and the preparation for the Passover, the third with the washing of the feet and the betrayal of Judas, the fourth with the institution of the Eucharist, the fifth and sixth with the passion of Christ and his descent into the underworld, and the last two with the resurrection and the apparition to Thomas. The English codices, however, supplied us with fifteen hymns out of the twenty-one written by Ephrem on the sacred supper and eight others on the crucifixion, along with some on the resurrection of Christ. In these various writings, the doctor of the Syrians explains the whole doctrine of the sacrament of the Eucharist and the sacrifice of the mass, by which the Passover of the old law and its sacrifices were abolished, with eloquent speech and exquisite verses. He then passes to the sacrifice of the cross. While painting in vivid colors all the pains of Christ in the passion, his supreme patience, clemency, meekness, fortitude of spirit, and most ardent love for