When it is said
It was written for Mass, but anyone can pray it at home, alone or together.
Pray it after a quarrel, or when the same quarrels keep coming back.
Where it comes from
No author known
Where it comes from
The prayer is kept 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. Much of the book goes back to prayers of the Church of Rome written between AD 628 and 715.
The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity database, University of Oxford, record E07005; H. A. Wilson, The Gelasian Sacramentary (Oxford, 1894), on archive.org
A Mass for a time of strife
The book gives a Mass headed “in contentione”, for a time of strife, and follows it with one headed simply “Another Mass”. This is the second prayer of that other Mass. The strife Mass itself opens with a prayer against pride. About AD 800, Alcuin of York made that prayer the opening of a Mass for humility.
H. A. Wilson, The Gelasian Sacramentary (Oxford, 1894), pages 278 to 279; Gerald Ellard, “Alcuin and Some Favored Votive Masses”, Theological Studies (1940)
The Scripture in it
Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in harmony!
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.
In Latin
Deus, qui unanimes nos in domo tua praecipis habitare,
dissensionum causas placatus depelle nostrarum,
ut competentibus adiuti subsidiis, te largiente,
possimus esse concordes. Per.
From the Gelasian Sacramentary, ed. H. A. Wilson (Oxford, 1894), page 279, on archive.org.