But deliver us from Evil

God does not lead you into temptation. God tempts you with gifts of Goodness alone, and to attract you to Himself. You, interpreting my words incorrectly, think they mean that God leads you into temptation to test you. No. The good Father who is in Heaven permits evil, but does not create it. He is the Good from which every good flows. But Evil exists. It existed from the moment Lucifer set himself up against God. It is up to you to make Evil a Good by overcoming it and by beseeching the Father for the strength to overcome it."

In the work of Maria Valtorta

Notebooks: July 7, 1943: "Lead us not into Temptation, but deliver us from evil".

"God does not lead you into temptation. God tempts you with gifts of Goodness alone, and to attract you to Himself. You, interpreting my words incorrectly, think they mean that God leads you into temptation to test you. No. The good Father who is in Heaven permits evil, but does not create it. He is the Good from which every good flows. But Evil exists. It existed from the moment Lucifer set himself up against God. It is up to you to make Evil a Good by overcoming it and by beseeching the Father for the strength to overcome it.

This is what you request in the last petition. That God may grant you enough strength to be able to withstand temptation. Without his aid temptation would bend you, for it is cunning and strong, and you are dull and weak. But the Father's Light illuminates you, and the Father's Power strengthens you, and the Father's Love protects you, so that Evil dies and you are left freed from it.

This is what you ask for in the 'Our Father' which I have taught to You. Therein everything is comprehended; everything, understood; everything which it is just to request and grant, requested. If the world were able to live out the 'Our Father', the Kingdom of God would be in the world. But the world is unable to pray. It is unable to love. It is unable to save itself. It is capable only of hating, sinning, and condemning itself.

But I did not give and make this prayer for the world, which has preferred to be the kingdom of Satan. I have given and made this prayer for those whom the Father has given to Me because they are his, and I have made it so that they may be one with the Father and with Me, beginning in this life, so as to reach the fullness of union in the other."

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 of the Catholic Church

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).