Two or three years ago an alert friend came across an unusual interpretation of the familiar liturgical phrase, “And with your spirit.” Older worshippers knew these words in their Latin form, “Et cum spiritu tuo.”
And younger participants have heard an echo of this ancient terminology in the common response, “And also with you,” a reply to the officiant’s familiar greeting, “The Lord be with you.” This brief liturgical dialogue used in recent years seems to amount to no more than the routine, “How are you?” and its reply, “Fine. How are you?” The interchange has devolved into a sacramental pleasantry denying the celebrant his ordained dignity and depriving the congregation a moment’s consideration on the importance of priestly mediation. Note, of course, that the word “spirit” has a small “s,” clearly referring to the priest’s ministerial spirit and not to the Holy “Spirit” of God. So exactly what is this spirit that the priest celebrant possesses and which the congregation expressly affirms several times during Mass? There has been a flurry of commentary and explanation on this somewhat forgotten phrase in anticipation of its restored use in the English liturgy come Advent.
The bishop or a priest and sometimes a deacon pray that the Lord be present to the assembled faithful at five points during the Mass: at the initial greeting, at the Gospel, before the Eucharistic Prayer, the sign of peace and at the final blessing. The celebrant is praying that God fortify his people with his divine presence enabling the congregation to relish and appreciate and profit from the sacramental experience in which they are about to participate. “The Lord be with you,” is much more than a wish. It is truly an invocation summoning the power of God from heaven on the worshipping community. And this invocation is made precisely at vital points in the Mass: at the beginning, calling the faithful to attend to the celebration about to begin; at the Gospel, insuring that the people heed the very words of God himself; at the Eucharistic Prayer, calling attention to the imminent presence of Christ's body and blood, at the sign of peace, re-affirming the community nature of the celebration, and at the end of Mass, directing the people to live out in daily life the liturgical experience they have just shared in church. The celebrant knows that the richness of the Mass in all its stages cannot be appreciated unless the Lord truly enlightens and directs the people toward a deeper participation. Benefiting from the celebration of Mass is chiefly God’s work with which the people are asked to cooperate.
Once the celebrant has invoked the Lord on the gathered assembly, they in turn remind the priest of how much they and the Lord are counting on him to exercise his ordained prerogatives and priestly charisms for their benefit. “If you want the Lord to be with us so that we can enter effectively into the Mass,” they seem to be saying, “then we want the Lord to be with you as well so that you can summon up all of your divinely endowed priestly expertise to make this Mass as meaningful and effective as can be.” Asking that the Lord be with the celebrant's spirit is requesting that God fill every fiber of the priest’s being insuring the worth and success of the prayers he is about to utter, the homily he is going to deliver, and the sacrifice he is ordained to offer. “And with your spirit,” is a simple prayer in few words that the priest might be truly a priest, that his leadership might be effective, his governance be wise and his ministry bear fruit.
The Second Vatican Council rightly issued a call for active participation on the part of the laity in the sacramental liturgies of the church. Certainly worshippers had participated spiritually and interiorly at Mass but more interaction between the priest at the altar and the people in the pews is fitting. Active participation properly exercised emphasizes the dignity of everyone in church. Sadly the activity of the laity was sometimes at the expense of the clergy. A reverse clericalism assigned all kinds of semi-priestly tasks to the unordained in an effort to bolster their status while divesting, relocating and on occasion even silencing the celebrant without much regard for his divinely ordered status. The restoration of the phrase “And with your spirit,” is a subtle and succinct recognition of the unique dignity and charisma that the ordained priest brings to the celebration of the Eucharist and to the church's entire sacramental life.
