Saint Ephrem the Syrian paints several beautiful pictures of Paradise throughout his fifteen hymns. All his descriptions pulsate with images of the divine grace and perfection that were once home to mankind. Delving deeper into it, Saint Ephrem illuminates for his readers certain qualities of this transient life that are reflections or compulsions towards Paradise. Also, while praising Paradise, he shows how perverse man has become since his fall, in his desire to remain in a place far from Paradise rather than glorying in the opportunity to finally return to his original home.
Yet what caught my attention was a passage in Saint Ephrem’s eighth hymn when he describes the relationship between the soul and the body.
If the soul, while in the body, / resembles an embryo / and is unable to know / either itself or its companion, / how much more feeble will it then be / once it has left the body, / no longer possessing on its own / the senses / which are able to serve / as tools for it to use. / For it through the sense of its companion / that it shines forth and becomes evident. (8.6)
To me, this idea of the soul’s dependency upon the body seemed absolutely foreign. I had always believed that the body needed the soul for its animation but the soul did not, necessarily, need the body to exist as well. It lived and had its existence and sustenance from God alone. And yet here, and earlier, Saint Ephrem clearly states the soul is not truly whole without the body in which it is to dwell. Perhaps it comes from always thinking of the word “soul” and the word “spirit” as synonymous, which gives rise to the idea of living without a body such as ghosts or shades, that I have always believed the soul to be autonomous apart from the body. But it still seems strange to me that the soul, the eternal part of man, would need the body, the fleeting part of man, in order to have its fullest existence.
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