When I reflect on Mary, mother of God, often my admiration and gratitude for her life of fidelity, faith and wisdom cannot be expressed in ordinary words. Instead, I turn to the deep tradition of poetry and music that has risen from among the faithful over the centuries, and especially to the work of one saint at the intersection of East and West: St. Ephrem the Syrian. Ephrem (an alternate spelling is Ephraim) lived in the fourth century in an area of the world that is now south-eastern Turkey. He wrote and spoke Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, a near linguistic cousin to the language spoken by Jesus. Although he may or may not have been a monk, Ephrem was…