Grabar remained the literary language of Armenians for some fourteen centuries, long after the spoken language had moved on, and it remains the liturgical language of the Armenian Apostolic Church today. The Divine Liturgy, the Badarak, is celebrated in Classical Armenian, and the church's hymnal, the Sharakan, collects more than a thousand hymns in Grabar spanning from the fifth century to the Middle Ages, including works attributed to Mesrop Mashtots himself, to Sahak, and to the tenth century mystic Grigor Narekatsi, whose Book of Lamentations is held so holy that copies were treated as relics with healing power. Classical Armenian also did the ancient world a quiet service as a preserver. Armenian translators worked so early and so literally that their versions transmit Greek works otherwise lost, including writings of Philo of Alexandria and the chronicle of Eusebius, recoverable only through Grabar.
The modern language split into Eastern and Western standards in the nineteenth century, and neither is mutually intelligible with the classical register, so Armenians meet Grabar the way Italians meet Latin, in church. Seminaries in Etchmiadzin, Antelias, Jerusalem and the diaspora continue to teach it, and the liturgy keeps it sounding daily.