St. Ephraim & CommunionFire: Invasion of The Holy Spirit

He has given you a new song! It is praise to Jesus! Many shall see it and be in awe Psalm 40:3

The Invasion of the Holy Spirit is real. He comes to reveal or show what Jesus has prepared for us every time we come to His Table. Want to see Jesus? Want to hear Jesus? Want to encounter His glory? You can! This CommunionFire is RevivalFire that comes to us when we simply have Communion at Jesus' Table! He comes to speak the words that Jesus gives Him to tell us.

For God, who said, "Let there be light in the darkness," has made this light "photismos" shine in our hearts so we could know the glory (doxa: manifestation) of God that is seen in the face (prosopon - literally the eyes) of Jesus Christ."  2 Corinthians 4:6

What Ephraim reflects is exactly what those involved in CommunionFire are experiencing. It is an individual encounter. It is intimate, personal and involves something that Jesus has prepared for that experience. 

Consecrating the bread through thanksgiving and prayer the Miracle happens. The "Medicine" of His Body, the Flesh of Jesus feeds us inside when we encounter His presence. The Holy Spirit opens our eyes to recognize Jesus (as in a glass or mirror). He "appears" to share something with each individual. His garb may change, the setting may change but whatever He shares, it invades us with His life! It is quick but lasts forever. When we feed on Jesus Body we feed on His presence. When we do it is the Living bread that never dies or spoils. It stays fresh and multiplies day by day.

In drinking wine from the Cup of the New Covenant it becomes the Blood of Jesus that invades our body and bloodstream, our mind and spirit with the fire of the Holy Spirit. It is the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead. It is the blood that speaks. the voice of the  Lord is heard on the breath, in the breeze, by the impulse and heartbeat of the Holy Spirit. When He speaks it is quick, clear and floods our being with the life of Jesus.

This is a new kind of revival. This revival is what all other revivals have at the epicenter. It is reviving by the Spirit who brings us face to face with Jesus in His glroy that transforms us from glory to glory.

The following describes how St. Ephraim tried to describe it. For him it was best explained through poetry and song. This is very reflective of the nature of the encounter with the Holy Spirit who Jesus sent to reveal Him in all things..

The Music of the Holy Spirit
"Madrashe", Verbal Icons and "Raze"

On St. Ephraim "The Second Moses To Women" ~Jacob Of Sarug Just as Moses set God's people free, so too, after Ephraim insisted that women take their rightful place in the church choir. Because they were performing the compositions of Ephraim's 'Teaching Songs' "madrashe", women effectively became teachers in the churches. 

Jacob of Sarug said, "Your teaching opened the closed mouth of the daughters of Eve, and now the congregations of the glorious church resound with their voices. It is a new sight that women would proclaim the Gospel, and now be called teachers in the churches!"

The teaching songs reflected the training material (catechesis) consisting of poetic meditations on the symbols and types used in nature and the Scriptures to lead people back to the Creator. Ephraim's theology used types and symbols that were commonplace not esoteric. The Bible was the horizon for their interpretation and all the  figures pointed to Jesus. For Ephraim the types and symbols are "verbal icons". He did not think of it as theology so much, but rather as "sacramental iconology". 

"The image of the image maker" was one of Ephraim's favorite figures of speech.

Ephraim speaks about 'divine revelation' as being the 'manifestation of symbols' (raze) that disclose aspects of the hidden realities of Christ, the truth. "mystery symbols" (raze) do not refer to the mystery of the symbols but rather to the fact that it is what is needed for God to disclose to human minds what they otherwise would not know. This includes the foreshadowing of the incarnate Christ (The Logos made to become flesh) seen in the Old Testament. 

So they (raze) may "point forward from nature and scripture to Christ who in turn reveals His Father to the eyes of faith.

The 'symbols' or 'types' (described or recorded as verbal icons) may be biblical characters and their actions, facts about nature or Scripture, concrete objects seen, heard or used in scripture, liturgy, narratives almost "cinematically imagined and poetically presented from bible or life!

They take their significance from the role they play in highlighting Christ for the believer, or even embodying Him for "the eyes of faith". 

Within this kaleidoscope of images a coherent figure of church and faith emerges, sufficient to ground a solid sense of Christian identity.

The EUCHARIST then becomes the ideal place from which to observe Ephraim the Syrian's concept of revelation. It becomes for us and was the intention of the Lord Jesus the method by which He 'will build His Church.' The Body and Blood of Jesus are the ideal 'brick and mortar' provided by God for us to find Communion in the Holy Spirit with Jesus because they are more than mere symbols or types, they are real! 

When we consume the Flesh and the Blood of Jesus Christ we become consumed by His love, truth and righteousness. So the type or symbol actually becomes the description of the actual event. The Bread of Life and the Wine of the New Covenant at best describe something so magnificent going on that takes in all of our anatomy, thought and spirit. It is like the descriptive "verbal icon" of 'waves of grace that pound continually on the beaches of our heart and life'. 

These "Ephraem" Posts are based on and use quotes from Modern Theology 15:2 April 1999 ISSN 0226-7177
"SPIRIT IN THE BREAD; FIRE IN THE WINE:" THE EUCHARIST AS "LIVING MEDICINE" IN THE THOUGHT OF EPHRAEM THE ASSYRIAN  Sidney H. Griffith, Institute of Christian Oriental Research, The Catholic University of America, 18 Mullen Library, Washington, DC 20064 Copyright  Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999. Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford 084 1JF UK and 350 Main Street, Maulden, MA 02148

We follow the Series on "The Need for the Creed" with a man who was living at that time 
and participated in the Battle for the Christian Faith. 

St. Ephraim (as you can see in column one) had a deep heart for Communion. the Eucharist or the word used in the Syriac Orthodox Church was "Qurbana". It had a fuller emphasis on The Sacrifice of the Cross. As the Apostle Paul said about the action of Qurbana, "We do show the Lord's death until He returns."

Here is an excerpt from one of His Teaching Songs written for Maundy Thursday where he speaks to those who were likely to frequent the synogogue at "Pesach".

My brothers do not eat,
Along with the Medicine of Life,
The unleavened bread of the people,
as it were, the medicine of death.

For Christ's blood
Is mingled, spilt,
in the unleavened bread of the People
and in our Eucharist (Qurbanan)

Whoever takes the Eucharist (bqurbana)
takes the medicine of life.
Whoever eats it with the People
takes the medicine of death.

In Ephraim's world Christians offered the holy qurbana not only at Easter time, and not only on Sundays and major feast days, but everyday! (As we do in CommunionFire) As clearly proclaimed in another of his teaching songs "On Paradise" He says,

The assembly of the saints
is on the type of Paradise.
In it is the fruit of the Enlivener of All
is plucked each day.
In it, my brothers are squeezed
the grapes of the Enlivener of All

Ephraim constantly refers to the daily "qurbana" as "the breaking of the bread and the cup of salvation"; often speaking as well of our Lord's "breaking His own body", at the Last Passover and first Qurbana. In an obvious evocation of the close connection in His mind between Calvary and The Last Supper, He says of our Lord at the Last Supper:

He broke the bread with His own hands
in token of the sacrifice of His body.
He mixed the cup with His own hands,
in the token sacrifice of His blood
He offered up Himself in sacrifice,
the priest of our atonement.

For Ephraim, as Edmund Beck has well said, "The Last Supper and its Table is the First Church and the First Alter and thus the representative of all churches and all alters."

Therefore, in his "teaching songs" Ephraim often calls attention to the prefigurations of the Eucharist in the New Testament and the numerous 'types' and 'symbols' in the Old Testament.

We now proclaim The Apostle's Creed when we come to the Table. What do you believe as a believer? What do those who join you at the Table believe?

APOSTLES CREED

I believe in God, the Father almighty,  
creator of heaven and earth. 
I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord,  
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,  
born of the Virgin Mary,  
suffered under Pontius Pilate,  
was crucified, died, and was buried;  
he descended to the dead.  
On the third day he rose again;  
he ascended into heaven,  
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,  
and he will come again to judge the living and the dead. 

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church,  
the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins,  
the resurrection of the body,  and the life everlasting. AMEN.