11.

 There is no reason to list his many writings. "He is said to have written three thousand myriad poems if one counts them all together."[²⁴] His writings cover almost all ecclesiastical doctrines. There are extant commentaries on Sacred Scripture and the mysteries of the faith; sermons on obligations and on the interior life; studies on the sacred liturgy; hymns for the feastdays of our Lord and of the Blessed Virgin and of the saints, for the processions of prayers and penitential days, for the funerals of the departed. In all of these, his purity of soul shines forth as a "burning and shining"[²⁵] evangelical lamp. By illustrating the truth he makes us love and embrace it. Indeed when Jerome testifies about the writings of Ephrem in his day, he tells us that they were read in public liturgical assemblies along with the works of the orthodox Fathers and Doctors. He also affirms that he recognized "the sublimity of Ephrem's genius even in the translations" of these same works from the Syrian into Greek.[²⁶]