Rite
West Syriac (Antiochene) Rite
West Syriac (Antiochene) tradition
The Antiochene liturgical family, whose Syriac Qurbono is celebrated by the Maronite, Syriac and Syro-Malankara Catholic Churches.
History
The West Syriac tradition is the liturgy of Antioch, the city where the disciples were first called Christians. Shaped in the Syriac-speaking world of Syria and Mesopotamia, it was carried by monks and poets — above all Saint Ephrem, whose hymns still furnish its chants — and it reached India in the modern period through the Syro-Malankara Church. Three Catholic Churches sui iuris live this patrimony today: the Maronite, the Syriac and the Syro-Malankara.
Background
The Divine Liturgy of this family is the Qurbono, ordinarily celebrated in the Anaphora of Saint James with a wide treasury of other anaphoras. Syriac, a dialect of the Aramaic that Our Lord spoke, remains its liturgical language alongside Arabic, Malayalam and the vernaculars of the diaspora, and its prayer is dense with poetic imagery, incense and the sung dialogue of priest and people.
Summary
The Antiochene liturgical family, whose Syriac Qurbono is celebrated by the Maronite, Syriac and Syro-Malankara Catholic Churches.
Family
west_syriac
Region
Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, the Holy Land and Kerala in India, with a wide diaspora
Entry kind
liturgical_rite
Content subtype
liturgical_rite
Faithful estimate
More than four million Catholics in the Maronite, Syriac and Syro-Malankara Catholic Churches