Good Shepherd by Jean Baptiste de Champaigne
Continued here are Father Schouppe’s meditations on the Lord’s Prayer, based on the second manner of prayer taught by St. Ignatius of Loyola.
“But deliver us from evil”
“We ask our Father to deliver us from all real evil; not precisely from what men call evil, but from what is evil in the eyes of God, from what is evil in regard to our salvation and the glory of God. Sin, and sin alone, can close against us the gates of heaven and cast us into hell.”
“The words of the sacred text which we translate by evil may signify the evil one, the demon, as well as the evil of which he is the author and promoter.”
“Deliver us from evil, from the devil, from his power, from his yoke, from his snares, from his fury. . . . ‘Because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour’ (1 Pet 5:8).”
“Deliver us from all evils, past, present, and to come; from temporal and eternal evils; from all sin, from the stains of sin, and from the debt of punishment; first from spiritual evils, and then also from corporal evils, in so far as this deliverance may be useful for our souls; from our past sins, from our present miseries, from our ignorance, and our errors; from sins to come, from a bad death, from eternal damnation; from all evils of the soul we ask, Lord, to be delivered in an absolute manner.”
“Remove from us, Lord, or, at least, mitigate, our corporal miseries, if it be for the advantage of our souls and your glory. The sufferings of this life, far from being always an evil, are oftener a precious participation in your cross. Therefore, we can and will ask deliverance only conditionally, saying with our Divine Master: ‘O my Father! if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt’ (Matt 26:39).”
Quotations from Francois Xavier Schouppe, An Easy Method of Meditation (Dublin: M. H. Gill and Son, 1883).
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