When it is said
The Bobbio Missal gives it in a Mass for the Litanies, the three days of prayer before Ascension Day.
The priest said it in a low voice over the bread and wine.
It is short enough to learn by heart and say on any hard day.
Where it comes from
No author known
A Mass book small enough to carry
The prayer comes from the Bobbio Missal, a book of Masses copied in the early 700s. The monk Jean Mabillon found it at Bobbio Abbey in Italy in 1686, and today it belongs to the national library of France. Because the book is small enough to carry, the library thinks it was probably a priest’s own copy, which he took with him as he served his people.
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Missel de Bobbio, latin 13246 (Gallica); “Bobbio Missal”, Wikipedia
Days of prayer before Ascension
The three days of prayer and fasting before Ascension Day were called the Litanies, or the Rogation Days. Bishop Mamertus of Vienne began them in Gaul, and Christians kept them to ask God’s protection in calamities. The Mass for those days opens by asking God to help His people, crushed by the ruin of a passing world.
E. A. Lowe, The Bobbio Missal (Henry Bradshaw Society 58), p. 89; J. M. Neale and G. H. Forbes, The Ancient Liturgies of the Gallican Church, p. 285; “Rogation Days”, Catholic Encyclopedia (1912)
What the words mean
“Spare Your people”
The Mass that holds this prayer had a reading from the prophet Joel, where the priests weep before the altar and ask the Lord to spare His people (Joel 2:17). The prayer takes up their plea. In the same reading God answers that He will send them grain, wine and oil (Joel 2:19).
E. A. Lowe, The Bobbio Missal (Henry Bradshaw Society 58), p. 88
Why the wild beasts?
The last line is Psalm 74:19 as the Latin Bible of the time read it. Where most English Bibles speak of God’s dove, the Latin has “the souls that praise You”. Like the psalm, the prayer asks God not to hand His own people over to harm.
J. M. Neale and G. H. Forbes, The Ancient Liturgies of the Gallican Church, p. 285, note; William Bright, Ancient Collects (1864), p. 122, note
The Scripture in it
God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in times of trouble.
Let the priests who minister before the LORD weep between the portico and the altar, saying, “Spare Your people, O LORD, and do not make Your heritage a reproach, an object of scorn among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”
Do not deliver the soul of Your dove to beasts; do not forget the lives of Your afflicted forever.
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.
In Latin
Deus, nostrum refugium in laboribus,
virtus in infirmitatibus,
adjutorium in tribulationibus,
solamen in fletibus,
parce, Domine, parce populo tuo,
ne tradas bestiis animas confitentes tibi.