Éphrem le Syrien
v. 306-373 4th century Feast day: June 9
Prayer as a happy thirst: drinking from a spring no one will ever drain.
Who was Éphrem le Syrien?
A deacon of Nisibis and then of Edessa in Mesopotamia, he was never a priest. He wrote his theology in hymns, hundreds of madrashe sung by the women's choirs he had trained. A refugee in Edessa after the fall of Nisibis, he died in 373 of the plague, caught while nursing the sick during a famine. The Syriac tradition calls him the harp of the Spirit; the Church declared him a doctor in 1920.
In their own words
Lord, who can grasp all the wealth of just one of your words? What we understand is much less than what we leave behind, like thirsty people who drink from a spring.
The thirsty one rejoices to drink, and is not grieved at proving unable to drink the fountain dry. Let the fountain vanquish your thirst; let your thirst not vanquish the fountain.
Your fountain, Lord, is hidden from the one who does not thirst for you.