Bonaventure — on Rom 8:26 (Breviloquium, Part 5)

“Although God is most generous and more ready to give than we are to receive, nevertheless He wills to be prayed to by us, so that He may have occasion to bestow the gifts of the grace of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, He wills to be prayed to not only by mental prayer, which is "the ascent of the intellect to God," but also by vocal prayer, which is "the petition of fitting things from God," not only through ourselves, but also through the Saints as through helpers divinely given to us, so that what we are less worthy to obtain through ourselves we may be able to obtain through the Saints. And because we know not what we should pray for as we ought, lest we wander in uncertainty, He handed down to us a form in the prayer which He composed, in which under the sevenfold number of petitions the universality of things to be sought is comprehended.”