You see then what is the method and form of prayer proposed to us by the Judge Himself, who is prayed to by it. It is a form which contains no petition for riches, no thought of honors, no request for power and might, no mention of bodily health and of temporal life. For He Who is the Author of Eternity would have people ask Him nothing uncertain, nothing paltry, nothing temporal. And so a person will offer the greatest insult to His Majesty and Bounty if he leaves on one side these eternal petitions and chooses rather to ask of Him something transitory and uncertain. And he will also incur the indignation rather than the propitiation of the Judge through the pettiness of his prayer.
St. John Cassian, The First Conference of Abbot Isaac: On Prayer, Ch. 24.
