AND ALSO WITH YOU. NO!

"The Lord be with you.
And with thy spirit."

Both in Morning and Evening Prayer as well as in the Order for Holy Communion, in "The Book of Common Prayer" (1662, 1928), the congregation hears, "The Lord be with you," said by the Minister (Bishop, Priest or Deacon) and then replies, "And with thy spirit."

This exchange in modern paraphrase (from the International Consultation on English Texts, 1970) and in modern liturgy has been made to sound like a greeting.

The Lord be with you,
And also with you.

But as used in church it is NOT a simple greeting as one would use meeting friends on the street or at the club. It is a profound exchange wherein the presence of the Lord by His Spirit is being claimed & accepted in general terms and being asked for in specific terms.

The traditional English form is itself a direct, literal translation of the original Latin, long used in the Church in western Europe.

"Dominus vobiscum
Et cum spiritu tuo."

Here the first line has the second person plural - you, the members of the congregation, while the second line has the second person singular - thou, the Minister.

The meaning of "The Lord be with you" is reasonably straightforward. The Minister addresses the people and claims the promises of the Lord Jesus, e.g., "Where two or three are gathered together in my Name there am I in the midst of them" (Matt. 18 v.20) and "I am with you always even unto the end of the world" ( Matt. 28 v.20). He is with them especially when as the Body of Christ and Household of God they meet at His Table on His Day to celebrate His Resurrection and to feast at His Banquet.

The meaning of "and with thy spirit" is also reasonably straightforward - or at least used to be. It is addressed by the congregation to the Minister and is first of all the recognition that he has been ordained to serve the Lord in His Church and to minister in and to this gathered people.

At ordination a spiritual gift from the Lord Christ was given unto him and it is with reference to this that the congregation speaks. It is thus a confident prayer that the ordained Minister will conduct the service as one who is inspired by and guided by the Spirit of the Lord according to the spiritual gift, a gift from the Lord Christ through the Holy Spirit, bestowed upon him at ordination. Thus "spirit" here refers both to the Holy Spirit and to the human spirit to which is attached the spiritual gift of ordination. It is an expression of humble confidence that the divine worship will be an encounter with the Lord Jesus in spirit and in truth through the ministrations of his ordained servant.

The decision to paraphrase "et cum spiritu tuo" as "And also with you" removes this reference to the particular status, role and calling of the ordained Minister and his place and purpose at the Eucharistia. It makes him to be merely the leader of the group (or presider at the assembly). Its use is therefore a great loss to the full meaning of worship and of ordination.

We recall that the modern translation has been justified on the basis that the original expression was a Semitism. Now, even if this is true, the fact remains that it took on a specific theological and liturgical meaning in the Early Church when they gathered for the Eucharistia with their bishop. And that meaning is the true meaning for Christians.

In other words, "and with thy spirit" may have begun its journey as an everyday greeting outside the Church, but it is transformed by its use in divine service and in its use at a meal that is unlike any other meal, the Eucharistia.

Thus we do no service to the cause of truth by avoiding the meaning that it has in all the texts and teaching of the Early Church with respect to the Eucharist.

Happily, the Vatican is now - at last - requiring those who produce English texts for the Church to translate, "And with your spirit." We may consider that this is good and right, for it was the misplaced zeal of R C translators in the 1960s/1970s that introduced us all to the strange expression (hardly modern English) "And also with you," and thereby cut us off from patristic doctrine.

AND ALSO WITH YOU. NO!


The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon
Minister of Christ Church, Biddulph Moor,
England & Vice-President and Emissary-at-Large
of The Prayer Book Society of America