Origène d'Alexandrie
vers 185-vers 253 3rd century
Not separating what one does from what one asks for.
Who was Origène d'Alexandrie?
The son of an Alexandrian martyr, from his youth he taught in the city's catechetical school, for a long time as a layman. His reading of Scripture, his austere life and his immense output made him famous throughout the East; his speculative daring would earn him posthumous condemnations. Arrested and tortured under Decius, he died of his injuries. His treatise On Prayer is the earliest great Christian book on the subject.
In their own words
He prays without ceasing who joins prayer to the works he must do, and to those works the prayer that befits them; for the acts of virtue and the commandments carried out are themselves taken up as a part of prayer.
There is only one way to take the command to pray without ceasing as something possible: to call the whole life of the saint one great continuous prayer, of which what is usually called prayer is only a part.
Where there are sins, there is multitude: schisms, heresies, dissensions. Where there is virtue, there is oneness, there is union.