When it is said
In the old Roman marriage Mass, the first two prayers came near the start.
The priest prayed the third over husband and wife together after they had received Communion.
A husband or wife might pray all three at home for their own marriage, or for a couple they love.
Where it comes from
No author known
From an early Roman marriage Mass
The Gelasian Sacramentary is a service book of the Roman Church, the second oldest of the West to survive. Its one copy was made about AD 750 from older Roman material, and its marriage Mass holds all three of these prayers.
H. A. Wilson (ed.), The Gelasian Sacramentary (1894), pages 265 to 267; The Cult of Saints database, University of Oxford, E07005
Older than the book
The first two prayers are older than the Gelasian book. They already stand in the marriage Mass of the Leonine Sacramentary. Its manuscript was found at Verona and is dated early in the 600s. The editor H. A. Wilson notes that the blessing over the couple is missing from it.
C. L. Feltoe (ed.), Sacramentarium Leonianum (1896), pages 140 to 141 and introduction; H. A. Wilson (ed.), The Gelasian Sacramentary (1894), page 267, note 1
Words for an anniversary
The same Mass had words for the 30th day of a marriage or for its yearly anniversary. They asked that husband and wife grow old together well and in peace, and live to see their children’s children.
H. A. Wilson (ed.), The Gelasian Sacramentary (1894), pages 265 to 266
The Scripture in it
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that crawls upon the earth.”
Jesus answered, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
Who is there to condemn us? For Christ Jesus, Who died, and more than that was raised to life, is at the right hand of God—and He is interceding for us.
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.
In Latin
Adesto, Domine, supplicationibus nostris, et institutis tuis, quibus propagationem humani generis ordinasti, benignus assiste; ut quod te auctore iungitur, te auxiliante servetur. Per.
Quaesumus, omnipotens Deus, instituta providentiae tuae pio favore comitare, et quos legitima societate connectis, longaeva pace custodi. Per.
Domine sancte, Pater omnipotens, aeterne Deus, iteratis precibus te supplices exoramus, pro quibus apud te supplicator est Christus, coniunctiones famulorum tuorum fovere digneris: benedictiones tuas excipere mereantur, ut filiorum successibus fecundentur: nuptias eorum sicut primi hominis confirmare dignare: avertantur ab eis inimici omnes insidiae, ut sanctitatem patrum etiam in ipso coniugio imitentur, qui providentia tua, Domine, coniungi meruerunt. Per.