Today June 9

Today is the feast of St. Ephraim, also spelled Ephrem (especially in French), and Ephraem, (306-373 AD). He was born in what is now Iraq (his native town was called Nisibis) but he was Syrian by extraction and that is the language he wrote in exclusively, although it was at a very early time translated into Greek, Latin and Armenian (among several other languages). He was a theology and philosophy major and taught theology in Edessa after he was made a deacon by St. James of Nisibis in Nisibis. He was ordained a priest but he refused all further honors -- to the point of even pretending he was crazy so they wouldn't ordain him bishop! He was know for his saintliness, his voluntary poverty and his mental clarity. He was a Bible scholar, a fearless hammer of the heretics, a chivalrous defender of the Virgin Mary (and virginity itself) and, as declared by Benedict XV, a doctor of the Church. And this man was a poet. He wrote everything he wrote (over a thousand works, according to the historian Sozomen) in verse! He was known as "the harp (or the lyre) of the Holy Spirit" and he inspired Dante by his poetical descriptions of heaven and hell.