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"We do well always and everywhere to give you thanks..." I don''t know about you, but I certainly don''t do well always. Who are you referring to when you say "we?" thanks
The prayer you reference is in the first line in (almost) every preface to the Eucharistic prayer. After the priest proclaims, "Let us give thanks to the Lord our God," the congregation responds, "It is right to give Him thanks and praise." It is then that the priest begins the lengthy Eucharistic prayer to God Father, usually with Father, all-powerful and everliving God, we do well always and everywhere to give you thanks.
So, the we referred to is us, the congregation.
However, I believe you misunderstand the phrase do well always and everywhere. It does not mean to do well in terms of success in some venture; yes, we all know failure. Rather, the sense of the phrase we do well in this case means, "it is good for us" or "this activity will help us." Allow me to illustrate with another phrase:
Your parents or teacher may say, before a big test, "you would do well to study tonight rather than play your Wii." It does not guarantee your doing well (succeeding) on the test, but this phrase, again, means that "it would be good for you" or "this will help you with the test" in this case. It would benefit you come test time if you were to study....hence, our phrase, "you would do well to do activity X."
Personally, I love this prayer. It says it is good for us to thank God, period. It is easy to do that when life is good to us; but the challenge is to see that in times of crisis, hurt, pain, death, loss, despair, we still believe it is good for us to thank God, at the very least, for the gift of life.
I hope this helps your understanding of this particular use of English in the liturgy. And I apologize for my tardiness in answering this question.
Grace and Peace,
Fr. Chris
P.S. For the record, today is my 15551st "birthday." That is, I have been alive 15551 days, and I can only pray that I am just a little more thankful for this day of life than I was for the 15550, because being thankful, whatever number day we are on, is an activity that is always good for us.
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