A priest's spirited explanation of the 'And with your spirit' greeting

One of the most prominent changes to the people's part of the Mass come Nov. 27 will likely be the switch from "And also with you" to "And with your spirit."

In an article posted today on the Catholic Herald's website, Dominican Father Austin Milner explains the significance of the change, which runs deeper than the fact that "And with your spirit" is the literal translation of the Latin liturgy's et cum spiritu tuo. The greeting's usage goes back to several of St. Paul's letters, and, Father Milner notes, is only found in Christian writings. He writes:

Let us begin by asking what St Paul might have meant when he used the phrase. A great deal of work has been done on this by New Testament exegetes which may help us to understand the liturgical formula.

First of all, we must ask whether St Paul is referring to the Holy Spirit or the human spirit. And at first sight it would seem that he cannot be referring to the Holy Spirit because he speaks of “your spirit”, and the Holy Spirit does not belong to any human being or group of human beings. So he must be referring to the human spirit. Paul sometimes speaks of the human being as composed of body, soul and spirit, but like the rabbis of his time he also tends to use “spirit” and “soul” as interchangeable terms. “Spirit” can designate the whole person regarded as a thinking and feeling being. So “with your spirit” could well be simply a way of saying “with you”. Certainly Paul has no intention here of speaking of the human spirit or soul as distinct from the body.
Most of the Pauline letters end with the wish that the grace of Christ may be with those to whom he has written: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor 13:13) or “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you” (1 Cor 16:23; 1 Thess 5:28; 2 Thess 3:18) or simply “Grace be with you” (Col 4:18; 1 Tim. 6:21; Titus 3:15; cf Eph 6:13). Why then, in the four Epistles mentioned above, does he express the wish that the grace of Christ may be with their spirit. What, if anything, does this add to his greeting?

It would seem that St Paul always regards the human spirit as a God-given spirit. For the Christian it is a new thing, which, though a created part of the Christian’s nature, is received from God, set in the believer by God: “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry “Abba! Father!” it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Rm 8:15-16; cf 1 Thess 5:23). Fundamentally there is for St Paul only one Spirit of God imparted severally to individuals (cf Rm 1:9; 2 Cor 11:4). It would seem then that in the four cases in which St Paul changes the “with you” of his final greeting to “with your spirit” he wants to do two things: he wants to remind his readers of the special human participation in the Spirit of God which they have received, and because he speaks of “your (plural) spirit” he seems to be referring to something that exists in, or has been received in common by, the whole church to which he is writing.

In several places in the Bible, however, the word “spirit” is used to refer to gifts of or effects of the Holy Spirit as in Isaiah 11:2: “And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD” (RSV). St Paul also uses the word in this sense when he says, for instance, “For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful” (1 Cor. 14:14), where a clear distinction is made between the spirit of the one praying in a strange tongue and his or her mind, or again when he says: “And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets” (1 Cor. 14:32). St Justin Martyr (c 250 AD) tells us that those who believe in Christ receive gifts, when they are baptised, each one as they are worthy. “The one receives the spirit of understanding, another of counsel, another of fortitude, another of healing, Another of foreknowledge, another of teaching, and another of the fear of the Lord” (Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, c39 [PG 6, 560]).

In the ordination prayers of The Apostolic Tradition the Church prays that the bishop will receive “the spirit of leadership”, that the presbyter will receive “the spirit of grace and of council of the presbytery so that he may aid and govern your people with a pure heart”, and that the deacon will receive “the spirit of grace and zeal”.

This sense fits well with the liturgical response, “and with your spirit”. Up to late in the fourth century the Eucharistic prayer, and indeed the other prayers of the liturgy, were spontaneous compositions, even though they followed one of several traditional patterns. Such spontaneous prayer was related to the gift of prophecy. A Christian work of the end of the first century called The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles says that at the Eucharist the prophets should be allowed to give thanks as much as they desire. Thus when the assembled people replied to the presider’s blessing, they prayed that the Lord would be with the charism he has received. By the end of the fourth century this spontaneous prayer had been replaced by the use of written prayers. In the church of Antioch and Syria preachers like St John Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia were saying that the word “spirit” in the response referred to the charism or grace of the priesthood which the bishop or presbyter had received.

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