When it is said
Say it at the end of a meal, alone or with others.
It suits a big meal best, such as a feast day or a holiday dinner.
Where it comes from
No author known
From a Roman book of about AD 750
The prayer comes from the Old Gelasian book, a collection of Roman service prayers probably put together near Paris about AD 750 from older prayers of the Church of Rome. It is the first of the two short prayers the book gives for after food.
H. A. Wilson, The Gelasian Sacramentary (Oxford, 1894), page 294; The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity database, University of Oxford, record E07005
English from the Latin
No old English translation of this prayer has turned up. The church historian William Bright put the Gelasian book’s second prayer after food into English in his Ancient Collects of 1864, but he left this one out. The plain wording is our own, made from the Latin.
William Bright, Ancient Collects, third edition (1864), page 175
The Scripture in it
When you eat and are satisfied, you are to bless the LORD your God for the good land that He has given you.
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.
In Latin
Satiati, Domine, opulentiae tuae donis,
tibi gratias agimus pro his quae, te largiente, suscepimus,
obsecrantes misericordiam tuam,
ut quod corporibus nostris necessarium fuit,
mentibus non sit onerosum.
Per.
From the Old Gelasian Sacramentary, Book III, section 87, ed. H. A. Wilson (Oxford, 1894), page 294.