When it is said
In the old Roman book both belong to a Saturday of fasting and prayer.
Pray them when the bills are due, or whenever worry about money starts to crowd out everything else.
Where it comes from
No author known
Where they come from
Both prayers stand one after the other in the Old Gelasian book, the second oldest Latin service book to survive. Its one manuscript, now in the Vatican Library, was copied in the land of the Franks about AD 750, from prayers of the Church of Rome that are older still.
H. A. Wilson, The Gelasian Sacramentary (Oxford, 1894), page 127; The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity database, University of Oxford, record E07005
Prayers for contentment
The scholar William Bright put both into English in his Ancient Collects and printed them under the heading “For Contentment”. In the printed Latin he used, the second prayer said God had “willed” us to be anxious. Bright called it an obvious mistake. Other old Mass books that carry the prayer bear him out, since they say God forbade it.
William Bright, Ancient Collects (third edition, 1864), on archive.org; H. A. Wilson, The Gelasian Sacramentary (Oxford, 1894), page 127 and its notes
The Scripture in it
But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.
In Latin
Da nobis, Domine, quaesumus,
regnum tuum iustitiamque semper inquirere,
ut quibus indigere nos perspicis clementer facias abundare. Per.
Deus, qui nos de praesentibus adiumentis esse vetuisti sollicitos,
tribue, quaesumus, ut pie sectando quae tua sunt
universa nobis salutaria condonentur. Per.
From the Gelasian Sacramentary, ed. H. A. Wilson (Oxford, 1894), page 127, on archive.org.