Quote of the day: "And with your spirit…"

“When we begin again to say ‘And with your Spirit’ instead of the banal ‘And also with you’, we should understand that we are not referring to the soul of the priest as distinct from his bodily existence. We are making reference to the awe-inspiring mystery of our common redemption and healing through the Holy Spirit whom the resurrected Jesus has sent into our hearts. In particular we are referring to the special grace gift of the Spirit by which men are made priests, praying that that grace will continue to enable them to perform all their duties in holiness in the service of the priestly people of God, and reminding ourselves that, as St John Chrysostom puts it, the minister at the altar ‘does nothing, and that the right offering of the gifts is not a work of human nature, but that the mystic sacrifice is brought about by the grace of the Holy Spirit and his hovering over all.'”

— Fr. Austin J. Milner, O.P. Read the rest here.

It’s a lucid and compelling defense of one controversial change in the new missal.