When it is said
The old Roman Mass book gives it as one of the prayers for a Saturday in Lent, at St Peter’s in Rome. Later it became a favourite prayer before and after the Mass.
Its words ask God to be in every piece of work from its start to its end, so it suits the beginning of a working day or of any task.
Where it comes from
No author known
Where it comes from
No author is named. The prayer is in the Gregorian Sacramentary, the Roman Church’s book of prayers for the Mass. Charlemagne asked Pope Hadrian I for a copy, and the Pope sent one from Rome before he died in AD 795. An early copy was written for the bishop of Cambrai, most probably in AD 811 or 812.
How it came into English
In England, the Mass as said at York and at Hereford placed it just before the confession at the start of the service. In 1549 the first Book of Common Prayer put it into English as “Prevent us, O Lord”. It was one of the prayers for a day when no one received Communion, and the book of 1662 let the minister add it to Morning or Evening Prayer as well.
William Bright, Ancient Collects (1864), the appendix on the collects in the Prayer Book; The Book of Common Prayer (1549), Holy Communion; The Book of Common Prayer (1662), Holy Communion
What the words mean
Why “prevent”?
In the English of 1549, “prevent” meant to go before something or to act ahead of it. Christian writers used it for God’s grace going ahead of what people do. The word comes from the Latin praevenire, “to come before”, and the Latin prayer itself uses that verb when it asks God to go before our actions.
In Latin
Actiones nostras, quaesumus, Domine,
et aspirando praeueni et adiuuando prosequere,
ut cuncta nostra operatio et a te semper incipiat
et per te coepta finiatur.
Per Dominum.
From H. A. Wilson, The Gregorian Sacramentary under Charles the Great (London, 1915), page 32.