Ephraim’s Mission of Beauty
(We missed Saint Ephraim on his post-1969 feast of June 9th, so here are a few words on the great Syrian mystic on his pre-1969 traditional date of June 18th).
In the Church universal, we celebrate the life of Saint Ephraim, often called the ‘Syrian’, who is also venerated amongst the Orthodox (on January 28th). He was a deacon, theologian, mystic, exegete, hymnographer – his extant hymns alone number over 400, and there are likely many that are lost – and all-round saint, who died ministering to the plague victims when in his sixties, in the year 373, the same year as the great bishop Athanasius. They were both inveterate foes of Arianism and the rest of the Christological heresies – Marcionites, Manichees and Bardaisanites, to name but a few of the others – floating through the air like noxious soup during that tumultuous fourth century, when the nature of Christ, and the Church, was being clearly defined, culminating in the great Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381) – with Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451) to follow. Saint Ephraim was declared the 24th Doctor of the Church (there are now still only 36) by Pope Benedict XV on October 5th, 1920
Ephraim participated in neither council during his life – he was too young for the first, born in 306, and already gone to heaven for the second. But his hymns, sermons, writings, and commentaries on Scripture did immense good not just in solidifying and clarifying doctrine but, particularly his hymnody and poetry, much of which is still used in the Syrian liturgies, making that teaching beautiful and harmonic. He was called during his own lifetime the ‘harp of the Holy Spirit’. Beauty will save the world, wrote his Dostoyevsky, and it certainly does a lot more than ugliness, brutality and coercion.
Here is one example of Ephraim’s hymns, ‘To the Light’:
The truth is indeed beautiful, and should be presented so, and it is a significant problem in our modern world that it is too often not, shrouded and concealed beneath hypocrisy, deceit, fear and outright scandal. May Saint Ephraim’s intercession and example teach us that beneath the tumult, waves, wars and persecutions of this world, the peace of that truth of Christ reigns, and we should immerse ourselves therein.
Sic cantemus!, so let us sing, with Ephraim, in our hearts but also with our voices, what beautiful hymns, motets, canticles and antiphons we may know, or may learn.
Saint Ephraim, ora pro nobis!+
Carney’s Amoral Majority
After five defections – euphemistically described as ‘crossing the floor’ – and three by-elections, Mark Carney and his Liberals how have their coveted majority. One wonders what bowls of pottage were offered in back-room deals. In the archaic monarchical system that is the Dominion of Canada, this majority allows the newly-minted Prime Minister to rule[…]Continue reading→
Saint Kateri , Canada’s Protectress
This was the title given to Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, by Pope Benedict XVI, when he canonized her on October 28th, 2012, along with six others, in Saint Peter’ Square (she had been beatified by Pope John Paul II back in 1980). With Saint Joseph as our protector, along with the Canadian martyrs, we seem to[…]Continue reading→
A Tale of Two Benedicts
A grace-filled Holy Week to all our readers! As we await and prepare for the Resurrection about to dawn upon us, we might keep in mind two Benedicts: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, requiescat in pace, elected on this day in 2005; and today’s commemoration of the mystic pilgrim, Benedict Joseph Labre, who died on this[…]Continue reading→
My Name is Bernadette
April 16th is a propitious day, for besides the anniversary of Father de Valk’s death, who founded Catholic Insight in its print form decades ago, and the commemoration of the ‘two Benedicts’, mentioned in accompanying posts, today we also recall Saint Bernadette Soubirous, the young visionary to whom the Virgin Mary appeared numerous times at[…]Continue reading→
Saint Lydwina of Schiedam and Suffering Joyfully
Saint Lydwina of Schiedam (1380 – 1433) was one of the countless and glorious ‘victim souls’ in the history of the Church, those whose lives are filled with suffering, often of an unimaginable intensity, but who suffer joyfully. She was a fifteen-year old Dutch girl, out skating one day, when she fell and broke one[…]Continue reading→
The Glorious Martyrdoms of Martin and Maximus
As we enter into Eastertide, we recall on this 13th of April Pope Saint Martin I (+655), one of the noblest, if most tragic, of the successors of Saint Peter. Born in Umbria, Italy, he was of noble lineage, with great intelligence combined with charity and love of the poor and the Church. While still[…]Continue reading→
Canonizing Sister Faustina and Divine Mercy
HOMILY OF THE HOLY FATHER MASS IN ST PETER’S SQUARE FOR THE CANONIZATION OF SR MARY FAUSTINA KOWALSKA Sunday, 30 April 2000 1. “Confitemini Domino quoniam bonus, quoniam in saeculum misericordia eius”; “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good; his steadfast love endures for ever” (Ps 118: 1). So the Church sings on the Octave of[…]Continue reading→
Saint Stanislaus of Szczepanów
We celebrate Saint Stanislaus today (+ April 11, 1079), in light of this Easter Octave, a bishop and martyr who accepted the episcopacy only at the direct order of Pope Alexander II. He proved a wise and courageous leader of his flock, put to death by his own king, Boleslaus, for rebuking the monarch’s ‘immoral[…]Continue reading→
Saint Gemma Galgani
On this April 11th, in 1903 – the same year that the Italian Guiseppe Sarto was elected Pope later that summer as Pius X – a lovely, young Italian woman died, by the name of Gemma Galgani. She lived a brief life of 24 years, as did a number of other young saints, including Pier[…]Continue reading→
An Ideological and Improper Translation
I noticed something odd with the psalm reading at Mass the other day. Our bishops’ conference here in Canada has decreed that the Mass in English – Novus Ordo – use the ‘NRSV’, the ‘New Revised Standard Version’, an ‘updated’ translation of the original RSV, first published in 1952. This ‘new translation’ has the tendency[…]Continue reading→