Sacred Heart Parish
PRAYING THE LITURGY
Dialogue responses: A familiar greeting by the priest (four times during the Mass) is “The Lord be with you”; the new response by the people is: “and with your spirit”, from the Latin, “Et cum spiritu tuo”. This gives a richer translation and alerts us to the fact that we are entering a sacramental realm. Both the greeting and the reply come from the Bible. Our response, “And with your spirit” is used by St. Paul as he addresses the entire Christian community. (2 Timothy 4:22, Galatians 6:18, Philippians 4:23 and Philemon 25). It expresses our desire that the Lord be present to the spirit of the entire community.
The Eucharistic Prayer begins with a dialogue using the same words, “The Lord be with you” “and with your spirit”; it concludes with the priest saying, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God”, to which our new response is “It is right and just”, a declarative statement closer to the Latin. Our response also serves as a more natural bridge to the beginning phrase of the Preface prayer, as the priest says: “It is truly right and just”.
Winifred Murphy, Pastoral Associate