Mass in the Holy Land – In the Language of Jesus – Aramiac

From the CBC news site:

“In the hills of the Galilee, the lush region in the Holy Land where it’s said that Jesus Christ grew up, residents of the town of Jish are preparing to celebrate Christmas Mass in the language Jesus spoke. A handful of people from Jish are at the centre of an effort to revive the Aramaic language — centuries after it all but disappeared from the Middle East….Maronite Christians in Jish celebrate part of their liturgies in Aramaic during services at St. Maroun Church, which takes its name from the fifth-century monk who founded the Maronite movement, which is still active in the Middle East, mainly in Lebanon and Syria….

Shadi Khalloul is the man behind the revival of Aramaic. While he remembers hearing the language in childhood, Khalloul said he didn’t really take notice of it until he was studying Bible literature at the University of Las Vegas. “My instructor was a Catholic instructor, and he said to us as students, ‘Don’t think that Jesus spoke Spanish or English or French or Latin … he spoke Aramaic, a language that disappeared,” Khalloul said. “So I felt offended. I immediately raised my hand and said, ‘Excuse me, instructor, but the language still exists. We still speak it, we still pray in it.'”

The full article may be read HERE:

WRITTEN BY: Stephen Sander