Day of St. Ephraim the Syrian

The Holy Orthodox Church celebrates the memory of St Ephraim the Syrian on February 10 The saint was a native of Syria; he was born in the 3rd century into a simple peasant family His parents were baptized Christians, but despite this their son grew up to be a rude and unkind young man One day, out of malice in his heart, he killed someone else’s cow, anticipating the grief of its owner A few years later, the young man himself suffered misfortune; he was falsely accused of stealing sheep and taken into custody Ephraim has a revelation in prison He hears the Lord's explanations about the inevitability of punishment for sins The young man discovers that retribution for evil overtakes the sinner when he is already able to realize his wrongdoing and take the path of repentance After experiencing pangs of conscience, Ephraim decides to start a new life Having managed to justify himself from a false accusation, he goes into the desert, where he becomes a student of the ascetic and preacher Jacob Over the long years of hermitage, Ephraim cultivated his own Christian virtues, he begins to read sermons, teaches and converts pagans to the Christian faith After the Persian invasion, Sirin was forced to leave the desert He settled in a monastery in the city of Edessa, where he worked hard on the interpretation of Holy Scripture, the lives of great hermits, and wrote prayers and church hymns In old age, Ephraim decides to visit Egypt, where he wants to get acquainted with the exploits of the desert hermits After meeting with the great ascetics, Sirin, returning through Cappadocia, comes to the sermon of Basil the Great The speeches of the holy father so shock the Syrian monk that he utters exclamations of admiration right during the sermon The strange old man attracted the attention of Vasily, after conversations the Great offered to ordain Ephraim as a presbyter But Sirin did not consider himself worthy of such an honor and agreed to accept only the modest rank of deacon Basil the Great did not abandon his attempts to elevate Sirin, offering him the episcopal see To avoid unwanted elevation, Ephraim poses as a madman After returning to Edessa, Sirin was faced with a general disaster that occurred as a result of a crop failure The monk managed to organize help for the needy, convincing the rich to be merciful Through his efforts, almshouses were established, where the exhausted and sick were received Only after returning to normal life does Ephraim retire to a lonely cave, where he meets his last days In folk tradition, St Ephraim's Day was called miraculous, because the owners could see the brownie himself, who definitely had to be appeased And from the weather of that day one could find out what the summer and the whole year would be like: - a gusty strong wind promised a cold, inhospitable summer; - thick humid air predicted a damp year; - a blackened forest foreshadowed an imminent thaw