When the Apostles asked the Lord to teach them to pray like John taught his disciples, Jesus gave them a basic structure for prayer. In it is contained seven petitions which reflect basic attitudes of prayer.  The final petition “Deliver us from evil” recognizes the reality of evil and the evil one, the reality of our inability to overcome evil on our own power, the reality of God’s power which is greater than any pseudo power the evil one wants us to believe he has, the reality of the need of God to grace us and for us to respond to the grace of God by rejecting evil.

The reality of evil:

God is love and love is a free choice, making the other the focus of one’s life. God internally manifests his love in the total self-gift  of each divine person to the other two. Because of this mutual self-giving love the Triune Persons are one. God further manifested his love externally through creation, among which are spirits and human beings. To be one with God these specific creatures would need to return love for love. But love, being a choice, would these special creatures choose God freely without question? When it came between God’s will and one’s own will, between accepting the person of God as God and the person of the created self, dependent upon God for everything, what would these spiritual and  human creatures do? Would they return love for love? Only if given the choice could it be known. (To be continued)