Praying to be Ready for the Son of Man

For the prince of this world is the head of all the wicked, and it was he who, when he tempted and overthrew Adam, brought down upon us sin and death and all the evils that afflict us; and he still claims to exert over us, in contest with Christ, what he holds to be his rights. When we ask to be delivered from evil, we ask in the same words and at the same time to be delivered from his yoke and tyranny. The evil from which we ask to be delivered is obviously moral evil, every kind of moral evil to which temptation incites us. Plato noted in an unforgettable manner that it is better to be punished (even and especially unjustly) than to be guilty. Moral evil, or evil of sin, Saint Thomas taught, is the preeminent evil, or evil in the supreme sense…

Nevertheless is there not another category of evil than the evil of sin? … Deliver us from all evil, Lord: from all sin, first of all, but also from lightning and tempests, from earthquakes, from pestilence, from famine and war, from everlasting death. Deliver us from that unparalleled sorrow of seeing those we love suffer without remedy. Deliver us from spiritual darkness. Deliver us from anguish … Deliver us from the terrestrial hell of destitution. Deliver us from the tortures inflicted by men or by the cruelest maladies … No matter what tribulation the Christian may be suffering, Saint Augustine explains, the last petition of the Lord's Prayer reminds him that he is made for that good in which one will no longer suffer any evil, and it likewise shows him the goal to which his groans and his tears should aspire … The blood of Christ has delivered us from sin; but this deliverance will be fully accomplished, for each man, only at the end of his life—and this provided he has not refused grace. And at the same stroke we will be delivered from every evil of whatsoever kind. And on the day of the resurrection, when all will be consummated and Jesus will restore all things into the hands of his Father, the new heavens and the new earth will exult at being forever totally released from sin and from death, and from every tribulation and every affliction.