After the priest chants aloud the ending of the Secret, he and the congregation or choir chant aloud three rounds of dialogue. The last thing that the priest chanted was the word Oremus at the beginning of the Offertory Rite; now, we hear him sing the end of the Secret, per omnia saecula saeculorum. It is as if the Offertory were one great oratio, the middle of which was shrouded in silence.
In the first round of dialogue that follows, the priest utters the standard greeting that calls the congregation to prayer: Dominus vobiscum, or “The Lord be with you.” The congregation replies with the standard response: Et cum spiritu tuo, or “And with thy spirit.” The priest does not, however, turn to the people to give the greeting as he does elsewhere: he is already intently beginning his entry into the Holy of Holies, and not looking back.
Instead of saying Oremus or “Let us pray” as he usually does after giving the dominical greeting, the priest says Sursum corda. The standard translation of this expression is “Lift up your hearts” even though there is no explicit verb. Sursum is an adverb for “up” or “upwards”, while corda is the plural of “hearts.” A more literal translation, therefore, is “hearts on high!” “upwards, hearts!” or “Let your hearts be up!” As he says this, he lifts his hands from the altar upwards up to the height of his chest, with the palms facing each other. It is as if he is holding his own heart invisibly before him and lifting it up to the Lord.
The congregation responds with Habemus ad Dominum, commonly translated as “We lift them up to the Lord.” But these words literally mean, “We have to the Lord.” English speakers might be tempted to think of “have” here as an auxiliary verb for the implied past participle “lifted,” so that the meaning is “We have lifted our hearts up to the Lord,” that is, we have completed the action that you told us to do. But Latin does not have constructions of an auxiliary verb and past participle. The more accurate interpretation is that the congregation is declaring that it currently has its heart pointing up to the Lord. “Let your hearts be up!” the priest commands, to which the congregation replies: “We have them up now!” At this moment, then, we should make an extra effort to enact what we have just uttered, to seek the things that are above (Col. 3, 1)—and conversely, as the Byzantine Rite puts it, to set aside all earthly cares. We are about to be present to the most sacrosanct moment on earth. Although our minds may have wandered at times during Mass, we must now get into the zone.
And the best way to get into the zone of a truly light heart, a heart that is “up” and therefore happy as God wants it to be happy, is with an attitude of gratitude, for there is no such thing as an ungrateful person who is happy. (“And when you have your heart up towards the Lord,” St. Augustine once preached, “He Himself holds your heart, lest it fall upon the earth.”) [1] The Canon, the prayer that gives us the Eucharist (“thanksgiving”) is preceded by the Preface, which is an extended call to give thanks, and the Preface is preceded by a short call to give thanks, Gratias agamus Domino Deo nostro or “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.”
That command, in turn, is answered with Dignum et justum est. In the older translations of preconciliar hand missals, it is common to see “It is meet and just” as the translation—“meet” being a now archaic word for “fitting, becoming, proper.” [2]. The official 2011 English translation, on the other hand, is “It is right and just” [3].
Of the two, the older translations are more accurate. The problem with “right” is that it can be seen as a synonym of “just,” in the same way that there is little difference between a righteous man and a just man. But the Latin dignus is not synonymous with being just, for it means “suitable, fitting, becoming, proper.” [4] “Meet” would therefore seem to be the obvious choice.
That said, besides its meaning being lost on the general public today, “meet” is not perfect either, for it obscures the important relationship of dignus to worth or dignity. The theme of worthiness runs throughout the Mass, perhaps because of St. Paul’s chilling warning: “For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily [indigne], eateth and drinketh judgment to himself.” (1 Cor. 11, 29) The priest prays twice before the Gospel that he may proclaim it worthily, the Offertory Rite marvels at the double dignity or worth of man as created and redeemed, and before Holy Communion the communicant confesses three times that he is not worthy that the Lord God should enter under his roof. With the response dignum et justum est, the congregation affirms that giving thanks to God is the just thing to do, that it renders to God what is owed Him, for as Aquinas teaches, religion is a virtue that falls under the cardinal virtue of justice. But the response also affirms that giving thanks to God is an eminently worthwhile affair that is worthy of our dignity, even if, as we later confess, we fear we are not worthy to do so.
Finally, that any response is made at all brings us to the very definition of liturgy. In pagan antiquity, a leitourgia was a public service done on behalf of the people, and as Josef Jungmann writes:
it was considered the proper thing for the lawfully assembled people to endorse an important decision, an election, or the taking of office or leitourgia by means of an acclamation. And there are evidences that besides the formula most used, Axios (the Greek for “worthy”), there were phrases like Aequum est, justum est, [and] Dignum est, justum est.
Jungmann also notes that the expression dignum et justum est was in the Jewish order of prayer. The use of it here in the rite of Rome therefore is a reminder of how Christian Rome consummates the yearnings of the two foundational cities of the West, Athens and Jerusalem.
Notes
[1] Sermon 25.2.
[2] OED, “Meet, adj.,” 2b.
[3] GIRM, no. 148
[4] Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary, 578.
[5] Josef Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development, vol. 2 (Benzinger Brothers, 1951), 111.
