Showing posts with label Ephrem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ephrem. Show all posts

Monday, June 27, 2016

St Ephraim: Protecting the vineyard of your life with psalms

Get ready to go forth to thy work, and gird thyself to cultivate thy field.

The field is your present life, and for a hoe take with you the Old together with the New Testament.

Put a hedge of thorns about your field and your soil, by prayer and fasting together with instruction.

If you are protected by this enclosure, the wild beast shall not invade thee, by which I mean the devil.

Tend thy soul after the manner of a beautiful vineyard.

And as the guardians of the vineyard strike at the thieves with their fists, and call out to them with warnings, and keep them at a distance with stones, so you cry out in prayer, and shout with the song of psalmody, and put to flight the thieving fox, that is the devil of whom Scripture says: catch the little foxes that destroy the vines (Cant ii15).

(St Ephraim: On Patience, the Second Coming and the Last Judgment, Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, vol 1, Advent 1).