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a partnership between priest and people

From the first Sunday of Advent 2011, all English-speaking Mass-goers will be using the text of the revised translation of the Missal. One revision in particular, to one of the most familiar people’s responses, has caused some confusion. Many of you will find the new translation of the response, Et cum spiritu tuo in the revised English version of the Missal difficult to understand, certainly compared with the translation, ‘And also with you’ to which English speakers have become accustomed since nearly 40 years. The new translation appears, conversely, rather traditional.

The reasons and meaning behind the introduction of the words ‘your spirit’ are unclear to many members of English-speaking congregations. Some people try to explain the introduction of ‘And with your spirit’ by claiming that it refers to the effect of the Holy Spirit in the priest, so it becomes a prayer that the Lord will increase the grace of his priestly ordination.

I see a different explanation: When I greet you “The Lord be with you”, your answer is from today on “and with your spirit”. This phrase is to be understood fully as “And the Lord be with your spirit”.

The really important point here is not the word ‘spirit’, but the word “with”. When we say “God is with someone”, we mean that God gives a task to someone who protests that he or she are inadequate to fulfill it. It is a promise of God to be with someone – God thus guarantees that with his help he or she can fulfill the commission God has given them. If God is with them, they manage.

The Lord be with you – and the Lord be also with you.

So here we have a partnership between priest and people, a partnership with a purpose: each praying that the Lord will be “with” the other in their shared act of worship. This Eucharistic act is something they would not dare to consider themselves adequate to undertake, had they not received the Lord’s commission that his disciples “do this in memory of me” (Lk 22:19); and it can be undertaken now only because the risen Christ himself promised to be “with” his Church until the end of the age (Mt 28:20). That is the main point underlying the phrase “…and with your spirit

Cf: www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20111116_1.htm