Above all an Antonine convent is a place of choral liturgical prayer and daily celebration of a conventional Mass. The Antonine Order of St. Isaiah clings to the Maronite liturgy in syriac, even if to help the Christian populace participate, some readings and chants are done in Arabic.

Precisely what is the syriac language?
The Acts of the Apostles tell us "that on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Ghost came down to the disciples, who began to proclaim the Good News to the motley crowd gathered together in Jerusalem. Their listeners were stupefied, as each heard and understood in his own language : Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Cappadocians, Egyptians, Cretans, Arabs, Romans, and the others..." .

But they, the Apostles, what language did they speak ? In what language did they think? In what language did they receive the message of the Lord? In Aramean.
"In Palestine(says R.D. Barnett) Aramean was the daily language of the people, Hebrew being reserved for the clergy and functionaries. Jesus and the Apostles spoke Aramean". This language, already a thousand years old at the time of Christ, is still not quite dead at the end of this 20th century. In effect, apart from the celebrated village of Maloulah, near to Damascus, where the inhabitants have never ceased to speak syriac, there are the Chaldean people in Iraq, and maybe still in Iran, who continue to speak this language and to teach it to their children. It is even true of those who emigrate to the USA and elsewhere.

So this very old language is still spoken, written, and printed; for what in the past we called by the rather vague name of Aramean, has become with time and its use by writers such as St. Ephrem, "Syriac".

There are three different forms of writing in syriac: Chaldaïco, Serto, and Estrangelo.
On the other hand - and this is the point which interests us here- Syriac remains the liturgical language of the Maronite Church, just as indeed it is that of the Chaldean church.

In the time of St. Maroun, Antioch was a center of Hellenic culture, but the people of north Syria and the banks of the Orontes spoke only syriac.
Choral prayer of the monks of Mar Maroun, as well as the celebration of the Eucharist, was held exclusively in syriac.

St. Ephrem of Nisibin, the greatest poet and writer of the 4th century, who gave an immortal brilliance to the syriac language, also had a musical gift far from the ordinary. He thought that the best method of keeping the faithful away from heretical errors was to teach them the truths of their faith in the form of simple songs easy to remember.

At the cathedral of Nisibin he had founded a choir of children and young girls to which the faithful came to listen with rapture. Afterwards they repeated these chants from memory. These melodies have come down to us in an oral tradition from generation to generation. It was only around 1889 that it was decided to transcribe them into modem musical notation. It is however only an approximate transcription as the quarter-tones of the oriental scale are not translatable to western solfege, but to them the Lebanese people remain firmly attached.

These tunes are still sung in the monastic services.
In the celebration of the Maronite Mass certain phrases remain in Syriac. In this way the words of the Congregation remain as a faithful echo of the words that the Lord pronounced during the last supper.

Only a few tens of years ago, the Sunday Mass was celebrated in the Christian villages of Lebanon entirely in Syriac, and all the people responded without hesitation. Only the readings from the epistle and the Bible were made in Arabic, but these Arabic texts were printed in the Maronite prayer book in syriac characters. This transcription of Arabic in syriac letters is called Karshouni . All Antonine monks read Karshouni as easily as Arabic as they have learnt syriac in the postulate, and perfectioned it in the novitiate. Also many Antonine have made profound and scientific research into this language which was the first and so the most authentic medium of the evangelical message.

In his preface to Ecclesiastes, the greek translator of the Sirach, who was indeed the grandson of Ben Sirach the Wise, excuses himself to his readers for the inaccuracies of his translation: "We ask you to be indulgent, if despite all our efforts we have not succeeded in a precise rendering of certain expressions, because when things are said in Hebrew they do not have the same sense when they are translated into another language." What is true for Hebrew is even more true for Aramean, which according to A. Caqnot, "was the language of an empire when Hebrew was that of a canton."

The importance of Syriac as the medium of expression for the evangelical message is certainly one of the reasons which have led the Antonine Fathers to organize a Syriac Seminar each year, which gathers together a great number of eminent erudites both from the western and eastern worlds, who put together the sum of their discoveries and their works to assist the Christian world to rediscover the richness of this venerable patrimony. The conferences and the debates are subsequently published by the Center of Study and Pastoral Research of Antelias.

For the traditional monastic services in Syriac, the Antonine remain steadfast in following the chants inherited from St. Ephrem. At the beginning of the century, the General Superior, Father Emanuel Ubaid, brought a famous cantor, the F. Georges Aziz, from Jezzine. Under his direction the choir of novices and monks at Mar-Chaya rapidly became a model Schola, whose reputation spread as far as the neighboring countries.

One of the disciples of F. Georges became the teacher in his turn : it was F. Paul Achkar who was sent to Rome to follow the courses at the Papal Academy "Santa Cecilia". On his return to Lebanon he composed and published several volumes of liturgical music, especially the psalms and tunes for the "Schime" syriac.

F. Achkar also had his followers: the F. Albert Cherfan composed polyphonic chants for parish liturgy and above all he created a choir which remains celebrated. Since the tragic disappearance of the Father, this choir has taken his name as witnessing admiration and in thanks. Another Antonine monk is a great composer, and to him we owe forms of the Mass, Motets, Psalms, Hymns, Oratorios, and instrumental music. It is he who founded the "School of Music" at Baabda, and he is well known is Lebanon for his great contribution to the revival of liturgical music.