‘But deliver us from evil’ (CCC2850-2856)
Posted on January 24th 2010 in The catechism explained
This final phrase of the Our Father is also found in Jesus’ final prayer to the Father, ‘I am asking you to protect them (the apostles) from the evil one’ (Jn 17.15). The reality of evil is always intensely personal, whether as evil suffered or as temptation endured, but our salvation includes the whole human family. Hence the prayer is ‘deliver us’. The communal reality of sin, its resonating consequences, is being transformed into the solidarity of the Church, which is described as the ‘communion of saints’.
The Church does not understand evil as an abstraction, but as referring to a person, the devil. This is the one who tempts, who literally throws himself across God’s plan (dia-bolos in ancient Greek). The definitive defeat of Satan has begun through the death and Resurrection of Jesus, and the consequences of which will be to free all creation from corruption.
This will reach its fullest completion at the end of the world. Yet now the world resembles a spiritual battlefield. Though ultimate victory is assured, the present situation looks very different, and the temptation to fall away and to lose hope is ever-present.
The prayer to protect from evil, therefore looks to the future as a prayer for peace and the grace of perseverance in expectation of the return of Jesus Christ.
The final doxology, ‘for the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours now and forever’ takes up the three first petitions of the Our Father, but are now proclaimed in adoration as having been accomplished through Jesus Christ. This forms the Liturgy of heaven, where Jesus will restore everything to the Father when He hands over the Kingdom to Him. The great journey of faith will then be completed, all its complexities and difficulties will dissolve as the God who is love will be all in all.
This now completes the four-year long systematic explanation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. From next week I will be beginning an explanation of St John’s Gospel.