St. Ephrem the Syrian
Patron of spiritual directors
Saint Ephrem (c. 306–373) was a deacon of Edessa and the greatest of the Syriac fathers. Almost all his theology is poetry: more than four hundred hymns, sung antiphonally by choirs of consecrated virgins he himself trained, that have made him called the 'Harp of the Holy Spirit.' His meditations on the Cross, on Mary, on the Eucharist, and on the spiritual sense of Scripture rivalled in beauty anything written in Greek or Latin and decisively shaped the liturgy of every Syrian Christian church. Benedict XV proclaimed him a Doctor of the Church in 1920 — the only Syrian among the doctors.