But deliver us from Evil
"God does not lead you into Temptation. He tempts you with gifts of Good only, and to draw you to Him. Misinterpreting my words, you believe they mean that God leads you into Temptation to test you. No. The good Father who is in Heaven allows evil, but He does not create it. He is the Good from which every Good flows. But evil exists. It has existed since Lucifer turned Against God. It is up to you to make evil a Good, overcoming it and imploring the Father's strength to overcome it." (Continued below).[1]
In Maria Valtorta
Notebooks: Catechesis of July 7, 1943 "Lead us not into Temptation, but deliver us from evil".
"God does not lead you into Temptation. He tempts you only with gifts of Good, and to draw you to Him. Misinterpreting my words, you believe they mean that God leads you into Temptation to test you. No. The good Father who is in Heaven allows evil, but He does not create it. He is the Good from which every Good flows. But evil exists. It has existed since Lucifer turned Against God. It is up to you to make evil a Good, overcoming it and imploring the Father's strength to overcome it.
This is what you are asking for in this last petition, that God gives you enough strength to resist Temptation. Without His help, Temptation would bend you, because it is strong and cunning, and you are limited and weak. But the light of the Father enlightens you, the power of the Father strengthens you, and the love of the Father protects you, through which evil dies and you are delivered from it.
This is what you ask for in the "Our Father" that I have taught you. In this prayer, everything is included, everything is offered, and everything is asked according to what is just to To ask and to give. If the world knew how to live the "Our Father", the Kingdom of God would come into the world. But the world does not know how to pray. It does not know how to love. It does not know how to To Save. It only knows how to hate, sin, and damn itself.
But I did not make and give this prayer for a world that preferred to be the reign of Satan. I made and gave this prayer for those whom the Father gave me because they belong to Him, and I made it so that they would be united with the Father and with me from this life, to reach the fullness of union in the other."
Now I truly understand what ‘Paradise’ means. It means living always seeing this Sun, One and Trinity."[2]
To go further
- Our Father
- Our Father who art in Heaven
- Hallowed be Thy Name
- Thy Kingdom come
- Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven
- Give us this day our daily bread
- Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us
- Lead us not into temptation
In the Catechism
VII. But deliver us from Evil
2850 The last petition in the Our Father is also expressed in Jesus’ prayer: "I do not ask you to take them out of the world but to keep them from the Evil One" (Jn 17:15). It concerns each of us personally, but it is always "we" who pray, in communion with the whole Church and for the deliverance of all the human Family. The Lord's Prayer continually opens us to the dimensions of the Economy of salvation. Our interdependence in the drama of sin and death is transformed into solidarity in the Body of Christ, in the "communion of saints" (cf. RP 16).
2851 In this petition, Evil is not an abstraction but designates a person, Satan, the Evil One, the angel who opposes God. The "devil" (dia-bolos) is the one who "throws himself across" the purpose of God and His "work of salvation" accomplished in Christ.
2852 "Murderer from the beginning, liar and father of lies" (Jn 8:44), "the Satan, the deceiver of the whole world" (Rev 12:9), through him sin and death entered the world, and it is through his definitive defeat that all creation will be "freed from sin and death" (MR, Eucharistic Prayer IV). "We know that whoever is born of God does not sin, but the One begotten by God protects him, and the Evil One has no power over him. We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the Evil One" (1 Jn 5:18–19):
The Lord who took away your sin and forgave your faults is able to protect you and keep you Against the cunning of the Devil who fights you, so that the enemy, who is accustomed to engender fault, does not catch you off guard. Whoever trusts in God does not fear the Demon. "If God is for us, who can be Against us?" (Rom 8:31) (St. Ambrose, sacr. 5, 30: PL 16, 454AB).
2853 The victory over the "prince of this world" (Jn 14:30) was won once for all at the Hour when Jesus freely gave Himself to death to give us His Life. It is the judgment of this world, and the prince of this world is cast out (cf. Jn 12:31; Rev 12:10). "He pursues the Woman" (cf. Rev 12:13–16), but he has no power over her: the new Eve, "full of Grace" of the Holy Spirit, is preserved from sin and from corruption of death (Immaculate Conception and Assumption of the Most Holy Mother of God, Mary, ever virgin). "Then, enraged with fury Against the Woman, he goes off to wage war Against the rest of her children" (Rev 12:17). That is why the Spirit and the Church pray: "Come, Lord Jesus" (Rev 22:17, 20) because His Coming will deliver us from the Evil One.
2854 In asking to be delivered from the Evil One, we also pray to be freed from all evils, present, past, and future, of which he is the author or instigator. In this final petition, the Church brings all the distress of the world before the Father. With deliverance from the evils that burden humanity, she implores the precious gift of Peace and the Grace of persevering hope in the return of Christ. By praying thus, she anticipates in the humility of faith the recapitulation of all and everything in the One who "holds the keys of Death and Hades" (Rev 1:18), "the Lord of all, He is, He was, and He is to come" (Rev 1:8; cf. Rev 1:4):
Libera nos, quæsumus, Domine, ab omnibus malis, da propitius pacem in diebus nostris, ut, ope misericordiæ tuæ adiuti, et a peccatis simus semper liberi et ab omni perturbatione securi : exspectantes beatam spem et adventum Salvatoris nostri Iesu Christi (Deliver us, Lord, from all evils, and grant peace in our days; by Your mercy, free us from sin, reassure us before the trials in this life where we hope for the blessed hope You promise and the coming of Jesus Christ, our Savior – MR, Embolism).