And with your spirit.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them up to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right and just.
The Preface Dialogue is one of the most ancient parts of the Mass. In the Apostolic Tradition of Saint Hippolytus of Rome, dating from around 215, much of the liturgy of ordination of a bishop is quoted, including these familiar words: “The Lord be with you. All respond, And with your spirit! Let us lift up our hearts. They are turned to the Lord. Let us give thanks to the Lord! It is right and just!” (Quoted in Lucien Deiss, The Springtime of the Liturgy, p. 129-30).
The first part of the dialogue, as we have already seen, is rooted in Scripture, and appears four times in the liturgy today. The words “Lift up your hearts” also have their roots in Scripture—Lawrence Johnson points out their similarity to Lamentations 3:41, “Let us reach out our hearts toward God in heaven.” The last part of the dialogue, “It is right and just,” a more literal translation of the Latin “Dignum et justum est,” is thought to be a response deriving from the Greek tradition, when it was “an acclamation of agreement.” (Johnson, 79) This response of the people is echoed in the preface, which amplifies the theme: “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks.”
In the 1974 Sacramentary, the people’s response was translated “It is right to give him thanks and praise” in order to express more clearly what we mean by “just,” which has somewhat different connotations in English than in the Latin. In this case, “justum” means “proper” rather than “fair,” a meaning we often assign to “just.”
The Preface which follows is a prayer of praise and thanksgiving to God for what he has done for us in Jesus. Each preface begins and ends in the same way. It is indeed “right and just” to give God thanks through Christ. And in giving thanks and praise to God, we do so in company with all the saints and angels. The central portion of each preface is richly varied (there are nearly 100 prefaces in the Roman Missal, to be used at different times, in celebrations of the seasons, saints, and sacraments). All of these prefaces say something about what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. The Prefaces of Ordinary Time are especially direct in their presentation of the heart of the Paschal Mystery, the saving life, death, and resurrection of Christ.
