At times, Catholic liturgy serves as the setting for my dreams. The celebrant is usually someone important, someone I admire, someone I’d love to meet. But my seat is always way in the back, so I cannot get close.

Last night, I dreamt that I attended a Mass celebrated by Benedict.

Instead of Latin, he spoke German.

At the sign of peace, we greeting each other with “the Lord be with you.”

But, from my muddled unconsciousness it came out as Der Genade sei mit dich.

I went back and forth between dich and dir, settling on dich. It’s actually dir.

I went back and forth between der and die, settling on der. It’s actually die.

Genade is Dutch for “grace”. I went back and forth about an umlaut over the “a.”

Genade is closest to Gnade, German for “grace” (see 1 Cor. 15:10 in Luther's 1545 translation). Not quite a synonym for "The Lord". I toyed with the orthography, moving the “n” around but settled on Genäde with umlaut.

Looking at a beginning German textbook right now (page 153), it seems that sei is the correct form for the present subjective, third-person singular of sein, “to be.” So, that makes two out of five words right in this simplest of sentences.

I often dream words visually, especially when I dream in languages other than English. But the words are not usually as clear as these and even these, you see how far off they are from being correct.