Something I never noticed.

Father Stephanos has a post pointing something out about the Mass that I never noticed, relevant to the new translation.

OK, so we've all heard that the new translation changes what English-speakers reply to the priest when he says, "The Lord be with you."

We're used to saying, "And also with you."  The corrected translation will be, "And with your spirit."

This isn't new to me.  I spent a few months in France when I was in college, and I went to Mass, and I noticed right away (it's the first response in the Mass after all) that the congregation was saying, "Et avec votre esprit."    When I had a chance, I looked up the Latin Order of Mass and saw that it said "Et cum spiritu tuo."   Strange! I thought.  And it seemed a strange sort of greeting, too, this "And with your spirit."  Why doesn't the priest say "The Lord be with your spirit(s)" to the congregation?  Why the asymmetry?  It doesn't sound like a natural sort of greeting.

It hadn't occurred to me that the odd sound is deliberate because it is more than a greeting. 

Father Stephanos points out that this curious greeting occurs at four specific points in the Mass.  (So there's one clue:  if it were just a greeting, it would be only at the beginning.)

Each time the ordained cleric (bishop, priest or deacon) says at Mass, "The Lord be with you," and the people respond, "And with your spirit," something is about to take place that is reserved to an ordained cleric.

1. The start of Mass, with the penitential rite, absolution prayer, opening prayer

2. The Gospel and Homily

3. The preface and the Eucharistic Prayer

4. The final blessing

In a sense, the people's response of "And with your spirit" is an acknowledgement of the apostolic credentials of the ordained minister. It is an expression of faith in the sacramental powers the ordained receive from Christ through the apostles and their successors.

I never noticed that! 

He quotes two early Christian fathers on the subject.  One is St. John Chrysostom (347-407), who explicitly states that this is the meaning of et cum spirito tuo.   (Yes, that's 407... we've been saying it for that long.)

When he stands at the holy altar, when he is about to offer the awesome sacrifice— you have answered “And with your spirit” reminding yourselves by this reply that he … does nothing by his own power … but by the grace of the Spirit

By removing the asymmetry that sounds a bit grating to our ears, by smoothing it to "The Lord be with you/And also with you," the ICEL translators reduced this exchange to merely a greeting.   

Possibility 1:  the ICEL translators were ignorant of the meaning of this exchange.  (So what were they doing being trusted with translating the Mass?  Huh?)

Possibility 2:  they actually intended to suppress the asymmetry, making the people's reply to the priest a mirror of the priest's greeting to the people --- toning down the distinction between lay and ordained.   Doesn't that sound like a bizarre conspiracy theory?  But --- this was 1970.  Which do *you* think was more likely?

Comments

[Bernard Brandt]

Actually, it is a bit more complicated than that. The earlier formula of call and response between priest and congregation, in both East and West, was "peace be with you" (Latin: pax vobiscum; Greek: eirene syn umin). The response of the congregation was "and with your Spirit". (Latin: et cum spiritu tuo; Greek: kai to pnevmati sou)

My understanding of the reason for the reference to the spirit goes back to the scriptural and patristic view of human beings as a tri-unity of body (sarx), soul (nous) and spirit (pneuma). When the congregation asks for peace for the spirit of the priest, they do so so that in that peace, the Spirit of God may work unimpeaded in the priest so that the mysteries of the Sacred Body and Blood might be accomplished.

I suppose that the ICELniks axed the "spirit" talk because it did not comport with contemporary psychology. I suppose that we should be glad that the response was not rewritten to comport with modern psychology. We might have wound up with something like: "a sound psychological state be with you." "And with your id"