Daily Reading for June 10 • Ephrem of Edessa, Deacon, 373
Glorious is the Wise One Who allied and joined
Divinity with humanity,
one from the height and the other from the depth.
He mingled the natures like pigments
and an image came into being: the God-man.
Glorious is the Compassionate One Who did not use
violence, and without force,
by wisdom He was victorious. He gave a type
to human beings that by power
and wisdom they might conquer discerningly.
Blessed is Your flock for You are her gate,
and You are her staff, and You are her Shepherd,
and You are her drink; You [are] her pilot
and You are her overseer. O to the Only-begotten
who was fruitful and multiplied in all [His] benefits.
The farmers who cultivated life
came and worshipped before Him. They prophesied to Him,
bursting into song, “Blessed is the Farmer
by Whom is worked the earth of the heart;
He gathers His grains of wheat into the storehouse of life.”
The children cried out, “Blessed [is] He Who was for us
a brother and companion in the streets.
Blessed is the day that with branches
glorified the Tree of Life
Who inclined His height toward our childishness.”
Women heard that behold a virgin indeed
would conceive and bring forth. Well-born women hoped
that He would shine forth from them, and elegant women
that He would appear from them. Blessed is Your height
that bent down and shone forth from the poor.
From “Nativity Hymn 8” by Ephrem the Syrian, translated by Kathleen McVey. Quoted in Invitation to Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Anthology, edited by John R. Tyson (Oxford University Press, 1999).