Nisibis III
The city rejoices, the siege has been lifted. Nevertheless, Nisibis III is certainly a peculiar song of thanksgiving. In fact, it does not seem that that is what Ephrem set out to do. Instead, the hymn seems to be a search for meaning. It asks the great "why" questions in chronological order. Why did the siege have to happen in the first place? Why did God allow the city to come so close to destruction? Why did God permit the people to live in relative comfort during the siege for most of the time? Why did God ultimately decide to save the city? For many of these questions, Ephrem can find no suitable answer.
The hymn begins with the great theme that Ephrem wants the whole city to ponder anew: the ineffability of God. The refrain for the hymn is: "Praise to the One Being that is to us unsearchable!" He begins with what is a frequent theme in His works: a warning against prying into God's private business. He prays, "Fix thou our hearing, that it be not loosed and wander! For it is a-wandering if one enquires, Who He is and what He is like. For how can we avail to paint in us the likeness of that Being which is like to the mind? Naught is there in it that is limited. In all of it, He sees and hears; all of it as it were speaks; all of it is in all senses." If all of this seems cryptic and hard to understand, that is because it is. Ephrem means it to be so. He is saying the same thing that Saint Thomas says when he identifies God as "actus purus," pure act. There are no unrealized potentials in God. While we finite creatures alternate between potentiality and act, God is only ever acting. Potency does not and cannot exist in Him. In the following stanza, Ephrem is even more explicit. He says of God: "His aspect cannot be discerned, that it should be portrayed by our understanding: He hears without ears; He speaks without mouth; He works without hands, and He sees without eyes. Because our soul ceases not nor desists, in presence of Him Who is such; in His graciousness He put on the fashion of mankind and gathered us into His likeness." Finally, in the third stanza, Ephrem finally comes to the point: "Let us learn in what way that Being is spiritual and appeared as corporeal; and how it also is tranquil and appears as wrathful. These things were for our profit; that Being in our likeness was made like to us that we may be made like Him. One there is that is like Him, the Son, Who proceeded from Him, Who is stamped with His likeness."
Having given us this data regarding God, Ephrem next addresses the city. In addressing the city, he is addressing every one of us, because God calls all of us to be like fortified cities against the Enemy. In fact, He brings the enemy armies against us for our profit. Although He is always tranquil, a source of perfect peace, He seems wrathful to us, because our wills are so much at variance to His. [There is, in fact, a famous passage in Nisibis IX where Ephrem states that God's justice and His mercy are the same. It is in the disposition of our wills that we perceive a difference.] Ephrem explains this point further in the ninth stanza. He tells us there are three things that require chastisement: the Earth, the vine and the olive. The statement is a puzzling non sequitur. First, he tells us that there are three things that need chastisement, then he goes on to give a list of things, none of which is a moral agent. He explains: "When the olive is bruised, then its fruit smells sweet; when the vine is pruned, then its grapes are goodly; when the soil is ploughed its yield is goodly. When water is confined to channels, desert places drink of it; brass, silver and gold, when they are burnished, shine." In other words, the images are about the qualities of human beings, not inanimate objects. Ephrem is at pains to show by natural illustrations that God's "chastisements," the sufferings He makes each and every one of us endure, are meant to our profit from His goodness. They don't even necessarily have anything to do with sin. Certainly, if we have attachments to sin, we should turn away from them, but even in the absence of sin we may experience suffering for our profit.
Stanza 11, then, is an exhortation to the city to let the afflictions that God has sent be "books upon which we meditate." For Ephrem, it is critical for us to learn from what God sends us in the way of suffering. He says: "Let us be taught by that which has come, to escape that which is coming; let us remember that which is past, to avoid that which is future. Because we had forgotten the first stroke, the second fell on us; because we forgot the second, the third bore heavy on us. Who will yet again forget!"
It would be good for us to turn the eyes of our minds to the Mother of God and reflect a bit upon her life. She bore tremendous sufferings. None of that suffering had anything to do with sin, but it was all profitable for her. None of the Lord's gracious actions in her life were wasted. She learned from each one. Among the things that she learned, not the least would be the method of prayer Ephrem mentions in Stanza 11. She learned to reflect on her life experiences, pondering them in her heart.
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