The title of this article refers, of course, to the final petition of the Lord’s Prayer, the prayer that the Lord Jesus, God the Son Incarnate, taught us, whom he made his brothers and sisters, to pray to “Our Father.” The very beautiful Part Four of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, on Christian Prayer (sometime read the whole thing - slowly, over a period of days - as spiritual reading!),1 includes an extremely helpful line-by-line (petition-by-petition) commentary on the Our Father. Here is what it says about “Deliver Us from Evil":
What I want to emphasize today is that it is praying this petition, this petition that is among the very few that the Lord himself specifically taught us to pray to our Father, it is this petition, “deliver us from evil,” that is the normative way by which we are freed from bondage to sin (and this freedom “from” sin is of course also freedom “for” holiness).
Now, please don’t get me wrong; and lest I give you reason to do so, I hasten to add: I am not telling you that it is simply a matter of saying these four words! They are not magic - although neither should the traditional and orthodox and essential Christian affirmation of the very real effectiveness of prayer, as willed by God himself as part of his own plan, be confused with a claim that prayer is somehow magic, and thereby dismissed.
Our prayer to be delivered from evil is already a response to God’s grace, and in order for that prayer to be effective, we need to continue to cooperate with his response in turn to that prayer. So, the normative way for us to be freed from bondage to sin certainly includes fairly regular recourse to the Sacrament of Reconciliation; frequent, worthy reception of Holy Communion; a good prayer life (having had a lot of years of Jesuit education, I might suggest setting aside just a few minutes for an evening examen; here’s an easily remembered version by one of the holiest Jesuits I’ve known); penance, in accordance with the precepts and recommendations of the Church; and avoidance, when reasonably possible, of those situations in which one knows one will be significantly tempted to sin (“near occasions of sin”).
In short, this “way” includes use of those ordinary means offered and/or proposed by Christ’s Church. All of these are a gift from God, given through the Church in response to our petition in the Lord’s Prayer, “deliver us from evil.” When we pray this petition, we are praying that he will continue to give us these gifts and that we will persevere in availing ourselves of, and benefitting from, them.
What brings all of this to mind is a couple of interactions that I had on Facebook in just the last several days. (Someday maybe I’ll write something here that doesn’t come out of Facebook interactions …) One of these had to do with worries about “bondage” to demons and the consequent popularity of “deliverance ministry”; the other, with end-times speculations and worries about how one will be “delivered” from the evils of the antichrist.
Deliver us from demonic subjection?
The first, in turn, brought to mind something I experienced during my many years of teaching at Franciscan University of Steubenville. As is well known, Franciscan has, for a long time (going back many years before I came there), had a strong Catholic Charismatic Renewal presence. Now, it is not my purpose here to evaluate all of the strengths and weaknesses that charismatic spirituality has to offer. I will mostly content myself with saying that it has never been my own preferred spirituality. (Funny story: When I was hired and preparing to start there, and my mother told her parish pastor that I was going to be teaching there, he said something to the effect that he assumed that I was charismatic. She said no. He - Mom told me later - expressed some bewilderment.) Nevertheless, I always got along fine with everyone there.
One thing that I did think was problematic, sometimes significantly so, about the spirituality there - I think it may be less prevalent there now than it once was, though I’m not sure - was the activity of “deliverance ministry.” Too much ordinary human emotional - and/or moral - difficulty was attributed to direct demonic activity and thought to require special prayers for deliverance from this presence/activity. Putting wholly aside the potential that there might be in a deliverance-ministry relationship for exploitation and abuse - and this did happen, to an extreme and in fact criminal degree, in one case, leading to continued controversy about who knew what and when - there is, more fundamentally, the question of whether one should regard such prayers as an appropriate measure for overcoming ordinary temptations, even ones that are especially difficult for a particular individual to overcome (temptations like this still fall into the “ordinary” category!).
The brief Facebook interaction that brought this to mind was seeing, and responding gratefully to, a post by a Dominican friend, who is extraordinarily sensible about pastoral (as well as theological) matters, linking a new article on “Prayers for Deliverance” in a French journal. Let me note this especially:
It remains obvious: the prayer of deliverance par excellence is the finale of the Our Father (“Deliver us from Evil”). It is accessible to everyone and for everyone. It is up to all of us, Christians, to give it all its strength. Then, it is appropriate to recall the place of the sacrament of reconciliation, which brings about conversion of the sinner and interior liberation.
As for the more specific requests of people who feel imprisoned in bonds or who seek God's protection, the first response is to listen to them at length and offer them God's blessing. A beautiful blessing allows us to understand that the Lord's love is first, that he accompanies us in all our trials, mysteriously. It is about directing the gaze towards Christ.
Deliver us from republicanism?
The other, much more drawn-out interaction (and involving several friends) had to do with, of all things, the Habsburgs, the imperial family of the Holy2 Roman3 Empire4 during its final several centuries, then its successor the Austrian Empire, then its successor the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until its dissolution at the end of World War I. The last Habsburg Emperor, Karl I, acceded to the throne midway through the war upon Franz Josef I’s (who had started the war) death, died four years after the war’s end, was eventually beatified by St. John Paul II, and enjoys a cult - so to speak - following among some Catholics. (Naturally, I fully accept and endorse the Church’s judgment about his sanctity as entailed in his beatification - which doesn’t mean he was perfect; no one except the Blessed Virgin Mary was - although I don’t have a personal devotion to him.)
I won’t get into the details of what got me going on the topic of the Habsburgs or of the ensuing conversation. I will single out one thing that came up: the alleged possible eschatological (end-times) relevance of the topic. Paul writes to the Thessalonians about a lawless one - seemingly, the antichrist - and about a mysterious one who temporarily restrains this lawless one - seemingly, until sometime close to the moment of Christ’s glorious return. A traditionalist friend brought up the claim made by some Catholics - he hinted that he is among them - that the fall of the Habsburg, or, allegedly, “Roman,” empire, might constitute the disappearance of the one who restrains the lawless one, and hence the beginning of the end times.
(This claim about the Habsburgs is, of course, only one type of end-times speculation that can be found among some Catholics. Maybe you’ve heard about the “three days of darkness.”)
I want to say here more or less what I said to my traditionalist friend: This sort of speculation, even if true - and while I suppose that it could be - why not? - I don’t think there’s any evidence whatsoever for it5 - should be regarded as somewhere between largely and entirely pastorally irrelevant. It has somewhere between little and nothing to do with one’s daily life as a Catholic, hoping to be saved and to be happy forever with God in heaven. It, unlike the sacraments, a good prayer life in general, doing penance, and avoiding near occasions of sin, has between little and nothing to do with the prayer, “deliver us from evil.”
It is true that, as the Catechism teaches, the lawless one/antichrist will bring an unprecedented deception. But it doesn’t follow from this that the means by which believers will need to persevere in faith - and hope and charity - when this happens will be different in kind from the ordinary ones by which we always need to do so in the face of temptation, including very strong temptation - even though there will be a need to intensify our sacramental, prayer, and penitential life, and avoidance of temptation, when persecutions and deceptions grow ever stronger.
(Furthermore, even if we could somehow know that historical event x marked, or will mark, the disappearance of the restrainer of the lawless one - and we can’t - the Church’s theological tradition also tells us that we can’t know how much time will pass between this event and the actual appearance of the lawless one.)
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In short …
… (I know: too late), St. Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises concludes with a series of eighteen “Rules To Have the True Sentiment Which We Ought to Have in the Church Militant” (sometimes translated as “Rules for Thinking with the Church”). It is, it seems, his view that “discernment of spirits” - discernment as to whether a particular movement we experience in our soul is the work of the Holy Spirit or the evil spirit (something that he began to learn and practice while laid up with a cannonball injury to his leg and with - initially to his great chagrin - nothing to read but a Life of Christ and Lives of the Saints, nothing about knights; and that practice led to his conversion) - can only be done correctly if it keeps these rules. And the Church, in her moral, spiritual, and pastoral tradition, as found today in places like, yes, the Catechism, offers us ways of thinking about how to be delivered from evil. We ought to think with the Church, with the Church’s own sentiment, about this, rather than pursue vain curiosities and speculations about demons and emperors and whatever else. As St. Ignatius might have said, éstas me bastan - “this is enough for me” - because this is what the Lord’s own love and grace gives us.
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Ceterum autem censeo Putin et Cyrillum esse deponendos.
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What would you like me to write about?
I learned just a few weeks ago that the Maronite Catholic priest who authored Part Four of the Catechism also (more recently) wrote this book; I immediately purchased it from Amazon and am going to read it soon. If you like Part Four, you might like to check out the book too.
Which was neither holy
nor Roman
nor an empire.
My friend/interlocutor seemed to propose, implicitly, something like the following argument (along with a “consensus of the Fathers” that turns out to be questionable): If you’re not a monarchist, you’ve given into a sinful way of thinking; therefore, when monarchy is gone, and anti-monarchism is the default way of thinking, people are inclined to a sinful way of thinking … In other words, apparently, the way monarchism restrains the lawless one, with his deception, is by … being monarchism. Obviously this is circular. I’ll add that I think there are in fact philosophical and theological problems (“deception”) with that way of thinking about the human person that can be called “liberalism,” but that I don’t think my friend does a good job of defining it.
I appreciate this essay, and even more the link to the Catechism where I finally found a translation for "Lead us not into temptation" that makes sense to me. I have always wondered why we would ask God not to do what we know He does not do (Himself lead us into temptation), but I've never found a good gloss on it that helped me know what it _does_ mean. To help us not to yield to temptation -- now that makes sense and is a prayer I've prayed in those terms -- just not when praying the Lord's Prayer! So thanks both for your thoughts on "deliver us from evil" and for leading me to something that's bothered me all my life.
Great essay!