Holy Mass in Hebrew

We have been in Jerusalem for almost a month now, but it was not until today that we had our first formal encounter with the local Hebrew speaking Catholic community when we joined them for Mass in Hebrew. Not knowing the language, I tried following along in a missal with transliterated responses for about two sentences before giving up and just simply listening to the beauty of the rhythm and sounds of the words. Thankfully the universality of the Mass remains familiar enough to know at least where you are and what is happening so that you are able to pray along silently in your heart. While listening however, I did hear the repetition of at least one intelligible word in the readings, “Israel…something, something, something…Israel”. Checking the readings on my kindle (in English) I saw that they were from Hosea, the prophet through whom the Lord told Israel, “I will betroth you to me forever: I will betroth you to me with justice and with judgment, with loyalty and with compassion; I will betroth you to me with fidelity, and you shall know the Lord” (Hosea 2:21-22). You look up from the book and you see this people, His people, today; the same people to whom He gave His promises and from whom He took His flesh. For myself, coming from a country that is only a few hundred years old, it is difficult to grasp the reality that here in the Holy Land you are constantly in contact with people and places that contain thousands of years of history. They are the people and the places through whom the Creator has chosen to enter into His creation. With all of this in mind I later prayed Evening Prayer (in English), where in Psalm 135 we hear again repeated that, “The Lord has chosen Jacob for himself and Israel for his own possession….” followed by, “Sons of Israel, bless the Lord!” The history contains us too: Sons of Israel as the New Israel the Church, the bride for whom Christ gave up His life on a tree down the road from our hotel (Eph 5:25). Today we all celebrated this wedding feast of the Lamb together in the Mass where there was “neither Jew nor Gentile”, but all were “one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).