When it is said
The book that holds it places it among prayers for the needs of every day, just after a prayer to say when psalms are sung for someone else.
Anyone can pray it for their own family at any time.
The Latin leaves a space after “my father” and “my mother” for their names.
Where it comes from
Author by tradition
Where it comes from
It stands in a little Latin book on using the psalms, which opens with two lines of verse saying that Alcuin of York made it. A monk of Ferrières wrote a short Life of Alcuin before AD 829, and it describes a book of his on which psalms to pray in penance, in praise of God and in any trouble.
Migne, Patrologia Latina 101, columns 493 and 494; Gerald Ellard, “The Odyssey of a Familiar Prayer”, Theological Studies (1941)
Who was Alcuin?
Alcuin was a deacon of the church at York, in England. He met Charlemagne at Parma in AD 781 and accepted the king’s invitation to join his court. In AD 796 he became abbot of St Martin’s at Tours, where he spent the last eight years of his life.
Gerald Ellard, “Alcuin and Some Favored Votive Masses”, Theological Studies (1940)
Did Alcuin write the words?
Alcuin may have chosen this prayer rather than written it, because he filled the book with prayers from a wide variety of sources. The Latin in Migne’s Patrologia comes from an edition printed at Cologne in 1571, made from a manuscript so badly kept that its editor struggled to read the letters.
Gerald Ellard, “The Odyssey of a Familiar Prayer”, Theological Studies (1941); Migne, Patrologia Latina 101, the editors’ preface
The Scripture in it
Honor your father and mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 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.”
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.
In Latin
Dominator Domine Deus omnipotens, qui mirabiliter cuncta condidisti, et tua dispositione omnia creasti,
quique jussisti conditionem propagandae sobolis ex viro et femina esse,
et praecepisti dilectionem et amorem circa patrem matremque exhibere;
exaudi me misericors Deus clamantem ad te pro genitore meo N. et pro genitrice mea N.,
quorum utrumque ex tua providentia mihi humillimo praeparare dignatus es;
seu et fratribus meis atque sororibus, omnique parentela,
qui mihi peccatori ex carnis consanguinitate conjuncti sunt, tam vivis quam et defunctis,
quorum nomina et merita tibi Domino Deo universorum cognita sunt,
ut protegas eos atque ab omni malo defendas, et in via salutis eos disponas;
et ne dies eorum ante finiri sinas, quam per veram confessionem, veramque emendationem suorum omnium delictorum, peccata dimittas,
ut carne exutos coelesti participatione dignos efficias.
[…]
Servator mundi, qui cum Deo Patre et Spiritu sancto vivis et regnas in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
From De psalmorum usu, in Migne’s Patrologia Latina, volume 101.