The order of the two requests is significant. The wise man’s prayer is first and chiefly, “truth in the inward parts,” the removal of all forms of falsehood, hollowness, hypocrisy.

Neither poverty ... - The evil of the opposite extremes of social life is that in different ways they lead men to a false standard of duty, and so to that forgetfulness of God which passes into an absolute denial.

Food convenient for me - literally, “give me for food the bread of my appointed portion.” The prayer foreshadows that which we have been taught by the Divine Wisdom: “Give us, day by day, our daily bread.”

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