The Proper Attitude for Sacrifice

We offer sacrifices not for the sake of our own self-serving drunkenness—for such excesses are not in accordance with the will of God—but in the spirit of sobriety. And at the time of these sacrifices, we are obligated to pray on behalf of the common welfare, and afterward for ourselves; for we have been born for fellowship with one another, and the one who gives precedence to the common good above his own individual needs is above all acceptable to God. And let our petition to God be made humbly, not so that He might grant us good things—for He has already given them willingly and made them accessible to all people—but in order that we can receive them, and once having received them, we might preserve them.