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Prayers

A prayer for a good death

A short Latin prayer from the Bobbio Missal, a Mass book of about AD 700. It asks forgiveness now, so that at the end of life a holy angel may receive you.

Picture: Fra Angelico, The Presentation in the Temple (detail: Simeon holds the Child), about 1440–42

The words of the prayer

Plain English

O God, Saviour of all the living,You do not want the death of a sinner,and You take no joy in the ruin of the dying.

I humbly ask You to forgive my sins,so that I may weep for the wrongs I have doneand not do them again.And when my last day comes,the end of my life,may a holy angel receive me,cleansed of all my sins.Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Traditional wording, 1864

O God, Who art the Saviour of all the living,Who willest not the death of sinners,nor rejoicest in the perdition of those that die,

I humbly entreat Thee to vouchsafe me pardon of my offences,that I may bewail what I have committed,and henceforth commit them no more;and that when my last day and the end of my life has arrived,Thy holy Angel may receive me cleansed from all offences;through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Plain English by Wiser Walk, from the Latin, with William Bright’s 1864 translation beside it. How the wording is made. Traditional wording: William Bright, Ancient Collects and Other Prayers, 1864.

When it is said

In the Bobbio Missal it is one of the prayers of the Mass a priest says for himself.

William Bright put it into English in 1864 among prayers “for a happy death”, an older way of saying a good death.

Its few lines are easy to learn by heart and to pray each night.

Where it comes from

No author known

The Bobbio Missal

The Bobbio Missal is a Mass book copied in the late 600s or early 700s, probably in south-east France. The Benedictine monk Jean Mabillon found it in 1686 at the abbey of Bobbio in Italy, which gave the book its name. It is now in the national library of France in Paris.

“Bobbio Missal”, Wikipedia; E. A. Lowe, The Bobbio Missal: a Gallican Mass-book (MS. Paris. Lat. 13246) (1920)

A priest’s working copy

The book is small enough to carry about. The historian Rosamond McKitterick thinks it may have been a gift to a priest or a bishop, perhaps when he was ordained. She calls it a working copy made for constant use, and not a book for a monastery.

“Bobbio Missal”, Wikipedia, citing Y. Hen and R. Meens, The Bobbio Missal (2004)

What the words mean

“Saviour of all the living”

The opening lines echo the Bible. Paul calls God “the Savior of everyone” (1 Timothy 4:10). Through the prophet Ezekiel, God asks, “Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked?” and says He would rather they turn from their ways and live (Ezekiel 18:23).

The Scripture in it

To this end we labor and strive, because we have set our hope on the living God, Who is the Savior of everyone, and especially of those who believe.

1 Timothy 4:10 Echoed the living God, the Saviour of all

Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Lord GOD. Wouldn’t I prefer that he turn from his ways and live?

Ezekiel 18:23 Echoed God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked

One day the beggar died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. And the rich man also died and was buried.

Luke 16:22 Echoed the poor man carried by the angels when he died

Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.

In Latin

Deus, qui uiuorum es saluatur omnium,

qui non uis mortem peccatores nec letaris in perdicione moriencium:

te suppliciter deprecor, ut concedas mihi ueniam dilectorum,

ut admissa defleam et in postmodum non admittam,

et cum mihi extrema dies finesque uite aduenerit,

emundatis delictis omnibus me angelus sanctitatis suscipiat.

Per.

From the Bobbio Missal, ed. E. A. Lowe (Henry Bradshaw Society, 1920), no. 409, in the manuscript’s own spelling.

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Berean Standard Bible